A case of disseminated nocardiosis caused by Nocardia arthritidis in an immunocompromised patient with a history of chronic lymphocytic leukemia and rheumatoid arthritis is presented. This report highlights the use for multilocus sequence typing (MLST) in addition to single gene molecular sequencing to identify rare Nocardia species.

Nocardia has emerged as an important opportunistic pathogen, especially in organ transplant recipients. Heart transplant (HT) recipients initially had an especially high rate of Nocardia infection, but this could be reduced by the routine use of cyclosporine. Our objective was to clarify the prevalence and presentation of Nocardiosis in HT recipients in a retrospective cross-sectional analysis.

We report the first case of cerebral abscess due to a novel species of Nocardia in a heart transplant patient and describe the antimicrobial susceptibility of this isolate. As our patient was intolerant to trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, we also discuss alternative therapeutic options in brain abscess due to Nocardia sp.

A plasmid was found in Nocardia orientalis (formerly Streptomyces orientalis). Physical characterization of the plasmid DNA indicates a size of 33.5 kb and a single cleavage site for EcoR I. The presence of plasmid, and variation in its copy member, did not directly affect vancomycin resistance or production levels. The plasmid represents the first to be isolated and characterized from a glycop...

Isolation of Nocardia spp. from clinical specimens can be enhanced by the use of paraffin baiting, which relies on the selective ability of the organism to metabolize paraffin. We evaluated 44 Nocardia isolates, 18 group IV mycobacterial isolates, and 4 Streptomyces isolates for growth on blood agar (BA) and on carbon-free agar containing single or double substrates as follows: paraffin agar (P...

BACKGROUND The intra- and inter-species genetic diversity of bacteria and the absence of 'reference', or the most representative, sequences of individual species present a significant challenge for sequence-based identification. The aims of this study were to determine the utility, and compare the performance of several clustering and classification algorithms to identify the species of 364 seq...

By studying color variations between young and old asteroid families we find evidence for processes that modify colors of asteroids over time. We show that colors of aging surfaces of S-type asteroids become increasingly ‘redder’ and measure the rate of these spectral changes. We estimate that the mean spectral slope between 0.35 and 0.9 μm increases with time t (given in My) as ≈ 0.01 μm−1 × l...

This paper describes a practical exercise set to an introductory functional programming course. The exercise is to implement a small game involving a space ship in an asteroids belt, after the fashion of the classic Asteroids arcade game. The positive experience suggests that interactive graphics programs of this kind make good and entertaining programming exercises for functional programming c...

during 2 years, from march 1987 to april 1989, 600 samples of soil and plant were collected from different cities of northern provinces of iran. out of the six hundred samples 58 actinomycetes, 9 pseudallescheria boydii, 10 sporothrix schenckii, and 4 sporothrix schenckii-like fungi were isolated as the following: streptomyces griseus from 31 samples (38.27%), nocardia asteroides from 8 samples...

central nervous system ranks among the favorite sites to get involved by nocardia astroides. this opportunistic organism complicates many disorders characterized by cellular or humoral immunity disturbances.a 36-year-old woman is being presented, known to have systemic lupus erythematosus (sle) and having received a two year course of corticosteroid treatment. cerebellar abscess was found on di...