Many bacteria are difficult to subtype due to high genetic relatedness. In the cases of pathogens of medical or veterinary importance, subtyping is an essential tool of epidemiologists. This report describes a method for molecular subtyping based on the detection of point mutations without DNA sequencing or specialized equipment. The method, known as RNA mismatch cleavage, hybridizes RNA transc...

The Brucella abortus strain S19, a spontaneously attenuated strain, has been used as a vaccine strain in vaccination of cattle against brucellosis for six decades. Despite many studies, the physiological and molecular mechanisms causing the attenuation are not known. We have applied pyrosequencing technology together with conventional sequencing to rapidly and comprehensively determine the comp...

Brucella species are Gram-negative, facultative intracellular bacteria that cause zoonotic brucellosis. Survival and replication inside macrophages is critical for establishment of chronic Brucella infection. Virulent smooth B. abortus strain 2308 inhibits programmed macrophage cell death and replicates inside macrophages. Cattle B. abortus vaccine strain RB51 is an attenuated rough, lipopolysa...

Brucellosis is endemic in livestock and humans in Uganda and its transmission involves a multitude of risk factors like consumption of milk from infected cattle. To shed new light on the epidemiology of brucellosis in Uganda the present study used phenotypic and molecular approaches to delineate the Brucella species, biovars, and genotypes shed in cattle milk. Brucella abortus without a biovar ...

We present a bacterial genome computational analysis pipeline, called GenVar. The pipeline, based on the program GeneWise, is designed to analyze an annotated genome and automatically identify missed gene calls and sequence variants such as genes with disrupted reading frames (split genes) and those with insertions and deletions (indels). For a given genome to be analyzed, GenVar relies on a da...

Pathogens infecting mammalian cells have developed various strategies to suppress and evade their hosts’ defensive mechanisms. In this line, the intracellular bacteria that are able to survive and propagate within their host cells must have developed strategies to avert their host’s killing attitude. Studying the interface of host-pathogen confrontation can provide valuable information for defi...

4 Harmon BG, Adams LG, Frey M: Survival of rough and smooth strains of Brucella abortus in bovine mammary gland macrophages. Am J Vet Res 49:1092-1097, 1988 5 Karlsbad G, Kessel RWI, dePetris S, Monaco L: Electron microscopic observations of Brucella abortus grown within monocytes in vitro. J Gen Microbiol35:383-390, 1964 6 Meador VP, Tabatabai LB, Hagemoser WA, Deyoe BL: Identification of Bruc...

Those chemically defined media which have been proposed for cultivation of Brucella vary widely, both qualitatively and quantitatively, with respect to their content of sulfur compounds (McCullough and Dick, 1943; McCullough et al., 1947; Gerhardt and Wilson, 1948; Rode, Oglesby, and Schuhardt, 1950). Since the early studies of Zobell and Meyer (1932) there has been no critical investigation of...

  Brucella melitensis and Brucella abortus are of the most important causes of brucellosis, an infectious disease which is transmitted either directly or indirectly including consuming unpasteurized dairy products. Both strains are considered endemic in Iran. Common diagnostic methods such as bacteriologic cultures are difficult and time consuming regarding the bacteria. The aim of this study w...

The C epitope of Brucella O-polysaccharide (O-PS) has so far lacked definitive structural identity. Revised structures for this antigen revealed a unique capping perosamine tetrasaccharide consisting of a sequence of 1,2:1,3:1,2 interresidue linkages. Here, using synthetic oligosaccharide glycoconjugates, the α-1,3 linkage of the O-PS is shown to be an integral structural requirement of this ep...