BACKGROUND In an ongoing outbreak of haemolytic uraemic syndrome and bloody diarrhoea caused by a virulent Escherichia coli strain O104:H4 in Germany (with some cases elsewhere in Europe and North America), 810 cases of the syndrome and 39 deaths have occurred since the beginning of May, 2011. We analysed virulence profiles and relevant phenotypes of outbreak isolates recovered in our laborator...

Botulism results from consumption of preformed toxin or in vivo toxin elaboration in wounds or intestine. Of U.S. food-borne botulism cases since 1950, the majority were due to toxin A, but a significant number of suspect cases were never confirmed by culture or toxin detection. We report here a possible case of food-borne botulism attributed to toxin F production by a Clostridium baratii organ...

An alkaline phosphatase-labeled oligonucleotide DNA probe (CTAP) that was specific for the cholera toxin gene (ctxA) was identified. All cholera toxin-producing strains of Vibrio cholerae, regardless of serotype, hybridized with the CTAP probe, while nontoxigenic strains from either environmental sources or from deletion or substitution mutations did not hybridize. Unlike the whole-gene probes ...

Understanding interactions between harmful algal bloom (HAB) species and their grazers is essential for determining mechanisms of bloom proliferation and termination. We exposed the common calanoid copepod, Temora longicornis to the HAB species Alexandrium fundyense and examined effects on copepod survival, ingestion, egg production and swimming behaviour. A. fundyense was readily ingested by T...

Phytoplankton induce defensive traits in response to chemical alarm signals from grazing zooplankton. However, these are potentially vulnerable changes pH and it is not yet known how predator recognition may be affected by ocean acidification. We exposed four species of diatoms one toxic dinoflagellate future p CO 2 levels, projected the turn century, factorial combinations with predatory cues ...

s: Keszthelyi A Characterisation of anticryptococcal FC-1 toxin of Filobasidium capsuligenum, Acta Biologica Szegediensis Volume 50(3-4):155, 2006 Posters: 35th Annual Conference on Yeasts, 2007, Smolenice, Slovakia, Poster: Andrea Keszthelyi, Zoltan Farkas, Zsuzsanna Hamari, Ilona Pfeiffer, Csaba Vágvölgyi, Judit Kucsera Comparison of killer toxin producing and toxin non-producing Filobasidium...

Infections with bacteria producing shiga toxin are responsible for widespread disease and for the death of a large number of people. In the present study, we have developed a rapid method of high specificity for the detection of Shigella dysenteriae by combining immuno-capture of the bacteria and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification of their toxin gene. We compared the sensitivity of o...

Effective treatment of anthrax is hampered by our limited understanding of the pathophysiology of Bacillus anthracis infection. We used a genetically complete (pXO1(+) pXO2(+)) virulent B. anthracis strain and four isogenic toxin-null mutants to determine the effects of the anthrax edema toxin (ET; edema factor [EF] plus protective antigen [PA]) and lethal toxin (LT; lethal factor [LF] plus PA)...