Introduction Scrapie is a fatal neurodegenerative disease in sheep and goats that occurs naturally and belongs to the group of disorders known as tranmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE) or Prion diseases. Prion diseases manifest as infectious, sporadic and/or inherited disorders. They are characterised by the accumulation of protease-resistant isoform of the host encoded prion protein (P...

The organism of bovine pleuropneumonia was first cultivated by French investigators (Nocard et al., 1898). In their cultures, however, they were not able to see the individual organisms. Twelve years later Bordet (1910) succeeded in seeing them in Giemsa-stained preparations. They appeared as small granules, fine curved filaments, and round forms of variable size. The latter were similar to the...

The utilization of available substrates, the metabolic potential and the growth rates of bacteria can play significant roles in their pathogenicity. This study concentrates onMycoplasma agalactiae, which causes significant economic losses through its contribution to contagious agalactia in small ruminants by as yet unknown mechanisms. This lack of knowledge is primarily due to its fastidious gr...

There has been reported in the literature a number of attempts to observe in vitro the respiration of virus preparations in an effort to detect direct evidence of a valid metabolic activity. EATON (10) studied manometrically the respiration of cultures of Staphylococcus lysed by bacteriophage and found a detectable amount of oxygen absorption and carbon dioxide production. On the other hand, BR...