Silkworms are invertebrate animals that are killed by bacteria pathogenic against humans, such as Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pyogenes, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Vibrio cholerae. Injection into the hemolymph of antibiotics that are clinically used for human patients abolishes the killing effects. There are several advantages to using silkworms as an infection model, such as low cost,...

Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), particularly strains with type III staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec), represent a serious human pathogen in Tehran, Iran. The disease-causing capability depends on their ability to produce a wide variety of virulent factors. The prevalence of exotoxin genes and multiple-locus variable number of tandem repeats fingerprinting (MLVF...

Mycoplasma neurolyticum was identified as the cause of "rolling disease" in mice by Sabin (1) and Findlay et al. (2) in 1938. These investigators encountered the agent in the course of intracerebral passages of mouse brain homogenates in mice. The neurological syndrome was bizarre and unique, characterized by the abrupt onset of continual rolling movements to one side or the other, persisting f...

The scFv antibody towards the Burkholderia pseudomallei exotoxin was previously constructed by phage display and exhibited good specificity towards the exotoxin. We report here the optimization of the scFv expression in an E. coli expression system. Four different E. coli strains (ER2537, TG1, HB2151, and XL1-Blue) were examined for optimal expression of the scFv protein. Two types of carbon so...

Group A streptococcal pyrogenic exotoxins types A, B, and C and staphylococcal pyrogenic exotoxin were shown to be potent nonspecific T-lymphocyte mitogens. Adherent cell populations did not significantly affect the nonspecific mitogenicity.

Bacillus thuringiensis has been extensively used for the biological control of insect pests. Nematicidal B. thuringiensis strains have also been identified; however, virulence factors of such strains are poorly investigated. Here, we describe virulence factors of the nematicidal B. thuringiensis 4A4 strain, using the model nematodes Pristionchus pacificus and Caenorhabditis elegans. We show tha...

Live-attenuated bacterial vectors for antigens delivery have aroused growing interest in the field of cancer immunotherapy. Their potency to stimulate innate immunity and to promote intracellular antigen delivery into antigen-presenting cells could be exploited to elicit a strong and specific cellular immune response against tumor cells. We previously described genetically-modified and attenuat...

1. The production of exotoxin and of endotoxin by normal Shiga dysentery bacilli and by strains resistant to Laudman phage was found to be the same. 2. The presence of phage did not alter toxin production by the resistant organism.

Staphylococci and streptococci are leading causes of healthcare community-acquired bacterial infections worldwide. Within each genus, virulent species such as Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pyogenes pneumoniae associated with diverse syndromes superficial infection, invasive infection exotoxin production. less coagulase-negative staphylococci viridans common harmless human commensals but ...

The exotoxin (PE) of Pseudomonas aeruginosa was purified from 50-liter cultures by a simple three-step procedure, yielding 135 mg of essentially homogeneous protein. In Ouchterlony gel diffusion, PE produces a single line which does not interact with a diphtheria toxin-antitoxin precipitin line. The protein has a molecular weight of 66,000, an isoelectric point of 5.1, N-terminal arginine, and ...