Species from the genus Bacillus have the ability to form endospores, dormant cellular forms that are able to survive heat and acid preservation techniques commonly used in the food industry. Resistance characteristics of spores towards various environmental stresses are in part attributed to their coat proteins. Previously, 70 proteins have been assigned to the spore coat of Bacillus subtilis u...

The microsporidian spore extrusion apparatus activates with a calcium influx from Spraguea lophii spore wall/plasma membrane; this influx requires preconditioning with an extrasporular shift in medium pH to the alkaline in the presence of the polyanions mucin or polyglutamate. Undischarged S. lophii spores display calcium bound to the wall/plasma membrane with a characteristic calcium-chlorotet...

BACKGROUND The frequency and concentration of many airborne fungal spores associated with respiratory allergy symptoms are influenced by geographical and climatic characteristics. OBJECTIVE The aim of this work was to monitor the distribution of 11 potentially allergenic fungal spore types in 2 regions with different urbanization levels in Northern Portugal: Porto (urban area) and Amares (rur...

Among the different types of bacteria being exploited as live vaccines Bacillus endospores have a number of distinct advantagesmost importantly being their heat stability. Typically antigens are displayed on the spore surface or expressed in the germinating spore, i.e., the vegetative cell. Howantigens are delivered by spores can significantly affect the nature of the resulting immune response....

Many protozoa form spores in response to adversity; therefore, spore germination is a key process in their life cycle. Dictyostelium discoideum sporulates in response to starvation following a developmental program. Germination is characterized by two visible changes, spore swelling and the emergence of amoeba from the spore capsule. Several studies have indicated that an additional process ter...

An infection of pearl oysters, Pinctada maxima, attributed to a Haplosporidium sp. by Hine and Thorne (1998) has been detected on 3 occasions and is considered to represent a serious concern to the pearling industry in Australia. The spore ornamentation of the parasite was determined by scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy. Spores of the parasite were pleomorphic, o...

Bacterial spore formation has a major impact on medicine and agriculture, and its analysis has uncovered new paradigms for understanding bacterial physiology, cell biology, and gene regulation. The existence of bacterial endospores was recognized in the 1800s by both Maximilian Perty and Louis Pasteur, and spore formation and germination in Bacillus were reported by Ferdinand Cohn and by Robert...

Bacillus cereus spores are assembled with a series of concentric layers that protect them from a wide range of environmental stresses. The outermost layer, or exosporium, is a bag-like structure that interacts with the environment and is composed of more than 20 proteins and glycoproteins. Here, we identified a new spore protein, ExsM, from a beta-mercaptoethanol extract of B. cereus ATCC 4342 ...