Microscopic fungi are able to contaminate and deteriorate various food products and can subsequently cause health problems. Long usage of the same preservatives and disinfectants against spoilage fungi may lead to the development of fungal resistance to those chemicals. The objective of this study was to investigate the susceptibility of 3 Penicillium genus fungi, isolated from foodstuffs, to o...

Endospore formation by Bacillus subtilis is a complex and dynamic process. One of the major challenges of sporulation is the assembly of a protective, multilayered, proteinaceous spore coat, composed of at least 70 different proteins. Spore coat formation can be divided into two distinct stages. The first is the recruitment of proteins to the spore surface, dependent on the morphogenetic protei...

Bacterial spores are encased in a multilayered proteinaceous shell known as the coat. In Bacillus subtilis, over 50 proteins are involved in spore coat assembly but the locations of these proteins in the spore coat are poorly understood. Here, we describe methods to estimate the positions of protein fusions to fluorescent proteins in the spore coat by using fluorescence microscopy. Our investig...

Bacillus cereus, responsible for food poisoning, and Clostridium difficile, the causative agent of Clostridium difficile-associated diarrhea (CDAD), are both spore-forming pathogens involved in food spoilage, food intoxication, and other infections in humans and animals. The proteinaceous coat and the exosporium layers from spores are important for their resistance and pathogenicity characteris...

AIMS To better understand the parameters that govern spore dissemination after lung exposure using in vitro cell systems. METHODS AND RESULTS We evaluated the kinetics of uptake, germination and proliferation of Bacillus anthracis Sterne spores in association with human primary lung epithelial cells, Calu-3 and A549 cell lines. We also analysed the influence of various cell culture medium for...

Bacterial spores of Frankia produced in defined culture media were collected by filtration after washing in amounts approximating lo6 spores/mL. Frankia strains UFGCeI5 from Casuarina equisetifolia and UFGCgIl from C. glauca showed spontaneous release of spores in culture; strains HFPCcI3 from C. cunningharniana and HFPAllIl from Allocasuarina lehmanniana showed low spore release in culture unl...

an actively metabolizing cell. The end product of sporulation is an endospore with no detectable metabolism, which lacks most common high-energy compounds, including ATP and other nucleoside triphosphates (28). However, this dormant spore can survive for long periods of time even in a hydrated state, as there are reports of spores which may have survived several thousand years (33). While there...

This report concerns an investigation of an important aspect of fungal growth, the nature of the spore surface. The spore is the propagative body of the fungus so a knowledge of its germination process is of primary importance. The surface of the spore necessarily plays an integral part in this process since it is the first point of contact between the spore and such factors as water, food, and...

The role of spore dispersal mutualism remains equivocal in many fungus-insect assemblages. We tested experimentally whether an obligate spore-feeding beetle Zearagytodes maculifer has a mutualistic relationship with its host bracket fungus Ganoderma cf. applanatum via spore dispersal. We asked three specific questions: (1) whether or not Ganoderma spore germination rate is increased via beetle ...

Bacillus subtilis spores that germinated poorly with saturating levels of nutrient germinants, termed superdormant spores, were separated from the great majority of dormant spore populations that germinated more rapidly. These purified superdormant spores (1.5 to 3% of spore populations) germinated extremely poorly with the germinants used to isolate them but better with germinants targeting ge...