The appearance of Clostridium botulinum type E organisms and of toxin in experimentally inoculated packages of turkey roll was followed to study the time relationship between the presence of vegetative cells and the demonstration of toxin. The presence of vegetative cells was determined by immunofluorescence, and animal tests were used to assay toxin production. Growth initiated from detoxified...

Bacteria induce stress responses that protect the cell from lethal factors such as DNA-damaging agents. Bacterial populations also form persisters, dormant cells that are highly tolerant to antibiotics and play an important role in recalcitrance of biofilm infections. Stress response and dormancy appear to represent alternative strategies of cell survival. The mechanism of persister formation i...

Bacterial toxin/antitoxin (TA) systems have received increasing attention due to their prevalence, diverse structures, and important physiological functions. In this study, we identified and characterized a type II TA system in a soil bacterium Pseudomonas putida KT2440. This TA system belongs to the MqsR/MqsA family. We found that PP_4205 (MqsR) greatly inhibits cell growth in P. putida KT2440...

Recombinant beta-toxin from Clostridium perfringens type C was found to increase the conductance of bilayer lipid membranes (BLMs) by inducing channel activity. The channels exhibited a distribution of conductances within the range of 10 to 380 pS, with the majority of the channels falling into two categories of conductance at 110 and 60 pS. The radii of beta-toxin pores found for the conductan...

Previous studies in Chinese-hamster fibroblasts (CCL39 line) indicate that an important signalling pathway involved in thrombin's mitogenicity is the activation of a phosphoinositide-specific phospholipase C, mediated by a pertussis-toxin-sensitive GTP-binding protein (Gp). The present studies examine the effects of thrombin on the adenylate cyclase system and the interactions between the two s...

Intranasal administration of live attenuated Bordetella pertussis, from which the pertussis toxin gene has been deleted, has previously been shown to give rise to high levels of serum immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies against both the protective antigen filamentous hemagglutinin (FHA) and heterologous antigens genetically fused to FHA. Here, we extend these results by demonstrating that anti-FH...

Bacillus anthracis, the causative agent of anthrax, produces a tripartite toxin composed of two enzymatically active subunits, lethal factor (LF) and edema factor (EF), which, when associated with a cell-binding component, protective antigen (PA), form lethal toxin and edema toxin, respectively. In this preliminary study, we characterized the toxin-specific antibody responses observed in 17 ind...

A new cardinal parameter growth and boundary model for non-proteolytic C. botulinum was developed validated fresh lightly preserved seafood poultry products. 523 rates in broth were used to determine values terms temperature, pH, NaCl/water activity, acetic, benzoic, citric, lactic sorbic acids. The included the inhibiting interactive effect between these factors it calibrated using curves from...

The unpredictable nature of bioterrorism and the absence of real-time detection systems have highlighted the need for an efficient postexposure therapy for Bacillus anthracis infection. One approach is passive immunization through the administration of antibodies that mitigate the biological action of anthrax toxin. We isolated and characterized two protective fully human monoclonal antibodies ...