Bovine ocular infections compromise animal health and result in significant economic losses. Mycoplasma bovoculi is an etiological agent of conjunctivitis. Presented here is the 760,240-bp complete genome sequence of the M. bovoculi type strain M165/69(T). An analysis of the deduced proteome provides insights into the adherence and antigenic variation mechanisms of the strain.

In the studies of dynamics of pathogens and their interactions with a host immune system, an important role is played by the structure of antigenic variants associated with a pathogen. Using the example of a model of antigenic variation in malaria, we show how many of the observed dynamical regimes can be explained in terms of the symmetry of interactions between different antigenic variants. T...

Punctuated antigenic change is believed to be a key element in the evolution of influenza A; clusters of antigenically similar strains predominate worldwide for several years until an antigenically distant mutant emerges and instigates a selective sweep. It is thought that a region of East-Southeast Asia with year-round transmission acts as a source of antigenic diversity for influenza A and se...

We describe two subclones of Helicobacter pylori, isolated contemporaneously from a human stomach, which differ markedly in the vacuolating cytotoxin gene, vacA, but whose near identity in sequences outside this locus implies a very recent common origin. The differences are consistent with homologous recombination with DNA from another strain and result in a changed vacA midregion and, importan...

There are two alleles of the vacuolating cytotoxin gene from Helicobacter pylori, which code for toxins with different cell specificities. By analyzing the phenotypes of natural and artificial chimeras between the two forms of the protein, we have delimited a short stretch of amino acids which determine the cell specificity.

Vero cytotoxin-producing Escherichia coli O157 belonging to four phage types (PTs) caused 11 outbreaks of infection in England and Wales in 1995. Outbreak strains of different PTs were distinguishable by DNA-based methods. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis best discriminated among strains belonging to the same PT, distinguishing six of the seven PT2 outbreak strains and both PT49 outbreak strains.

Thirteen serum samples from nine children with Kawasaki disease and 23 control samples gave negative results on screening for antibodies to hog cholera virus, border disease of sheep, bovine diarrhoea virus, and equine arteritis virus. The sera from two children with Kawasaki disease were cytotoxic; a possible link with cytotoxin from Propionibacterium acnes is considered.

In a prospective, unmatched case-control study of sporadic Shiga toxin (Vero cytotoxin)-producing Escherichia coli O157 (STEC O157) infection in England, exposure to the farming environment emerged strongly as a risk factor (adjusted odds ratio = 2.45; 95% confidence intervals = 1.49-4.02; p=0.0004) posing further challenges and opportunities for prevention.