A national study was undertaken to investigate the incidence of invasive pneumococcal disease in the Republic of Ireland and to examine the associated isolates. In 1999, 144 S. pneumoniae isolates, all recovered from cases of invasive disease, were received from 12 microbiology laboratories. The incidence of invasive pneumococcal disease was estimated to be 6.6/100000 population. All isolates w...

Many mutualistic microbial relationships are based on nutrient cross-feeding. Traditionally, cross-feeding is viewed as being unidirectional, from the producer to the recipient. This is likely true when a producer's waste, such as a fermentation product, has value only for a recipient. However, in some cases the cross-fed nutrient holds value for both the producer and the recipient. In such cas...

The dry spells are severe obstacles to rainfed agriculture in Sahelian countries. farmers believe supplemental irrigation is an excellent way adapt spells. In this study, we analyzed the contribution of food security and compared profitability different types ponds constructed by northern Burkina Faso. Human cereal requirement was used as indicators analyze security. criteria for analyzing sele...

OBJECTIVE Development of a method using marketing research data to assess food purchase behavior and consequent nutrient availability for purposes of nutrition surveillance, evaluation of intervention effects, and epidemiologic studies of diet-health relationships. DESIGN Data collected on household food purchases accrued over a 13-week period were selected by using Universal Product Code num...

Conventional bioactive ceramic implants possess high osteogenic ability but exhibit poor machinability and brittleness, which limit their wide applications. In this study, we report an elastomeric machinable nanoceramic-based hybrid membrane that is formed by nanohydroxyapatite-reinforced matrix (poly(dimethylsilicone)-bioactive glass-poly(caprolactone) (nHA-PBP)) using a modified sol-gel proce...

Increasing numbers of Neisseria gonorrhoeae strains with decreased susceptibilities to ceftriaxone and other oral cephalosporins widely used for the treatment of gonorrhea have been isolated in Sydney, Australia, over several years. In this study, we examined the complete penicillin-binding protein 2 (PBP 2) amino acid sequences of 109 gonococci, selected on the basis of their diverse temporal ...

As one of the final steps in the bacterial growth cycle, daughter cells must be released from one another by cutting the shared peptidoglycan wall that separates them. In Escherichia coli, this delicate operation is performed by several peptidoglycan hydrolases, consisting of multiple amidases, lytic transglycosylases, and endopeptidases. The interactions among these enzymes and the molecular m...

Reduced affinity of penicillin-binding proteins (PBPs) for binding penicillin has been proposed as a mechanism of beta-lactam antibiotic resistance in staphylococci. Penicillin binding by PBPs of three penicillin-susceptible and two penicillin-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus was studied in kinetic assays to determine rate constants, drug concentrations at which PBPs were bound and th...

The Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002 genome encodes three genes, denoted cpcS-I, cpcU, cpcV, with sequence similarity to cpeS. CpcSI copurified with His6-tagged (HT) CpcU as a heterodimer, CpcSU. When CpcSU was assayed for bilin lyase activity in vitro with phycocyanobilin (PCB) and apo-phycocyanin (PC), the reaction product had an absorbance maximum of 622 nm and was highly fluorescent (λmax = 643 n...

DivIVA is involved in Bacillus subtilis cell division and is located at the cell poles. Previous experiments suggested that the cell division proteins FtsZ and PBP 2B are required for polar targeting of DivIVA. By using outgrowing spores, we show that DivIVA accumulates at the cell poles independent of the presence of FtsZ or PBP 2B.