Bacillus cereus is typically considered a blood culture contaminant; however, its presence in blood cultures can indicate true bacteremia. We report 4 episodes of B. cereus bacteremia in 3 persons who inject drugs. Multilocus sequence typing showed that the temporally associated infections were caused by unrelated clones.

Forty-five strains, representing 18 species of the genus Bacillus, were surveyed for production of hemolysin against rabbit erythrocytes. Broth cultures of B. cereus, B. alvei, and B. laterosporus contained lysins that closely resembled streptolysin O. B. subtilis and a single strain of B. cereus may produce lysins having characteristics different from those of streptolysin O.

In some Bacillus species, manganese levels influence the resistance properties of spores. To determine if this was true for Bacillus cereus, bacteria were sporulated with different MnCl2 concentrations resulting in spores with 30-fold differences in core Mn 2+ levels. Spores with different Mn 2+ levels displayed no differences in resistance to dry heat, UV radiation, γ-radiation, or hydrogen pe...

Crude extracts were prepared using the solvent ethanol from the seaweeds viz., Gracilaria edulis, Calorpha peltada and Hydroclothres sp. and screening for their antibacterial activity against six bacterial pathogens were also carried out. The test bacterial strains were Escherichia coli, Enterobacter aerogenes, Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Streptococcus faecalis and Bacillus c...

The rhizomes of Alpinia pahangensis Ridley yielded a new bis-labdanic diterpene for which the name pahangensin A (1) was proposed along with a new labdane diterpene, pahangensin B (2). Their structures were elucidated by spectroscopic methods including, 1D and 2D NMR techniques and LCMS-IT-TOF analysis. Pahangensin A (1) was found to be an antibacterial agent against Staphylococcus aureus, Baci...

Bioconversion of sugarcane molasses to poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3- hydroxyvalerate) by endophytic Bacillus cereus RCL 02Rituparna Das, Arundhati Pal, Amal Kanti Paul

The mode of action of cerein 8A, a bacteriocin produced by the soil bacterium Bacillus cereus 8A, was investigated. The effect of cerein 8A was tested against Listeria monocytogenes and a bactericidal effect at 400 arbitrary units (AU)/ml was observed. In addition, cerein 8A was bactericidal against Bacillus cereus at 200 AU/ml, and inhibited the growth of Escherichia coli and Salmonella Enteri...

Endophthalmitis, of any aetiology, is a potentially devastating ocular infection. Few patients are able to maintain good visual acuity. Many retain only navigational vision and a significant number require evisceration or enucleation. 2 The incidence ofendophthalmitis after trauma has been estimated to occur in 2-7% of cases.3 Various organisms have been implicated but, in recent years, Bacillu...

A fluorescent heteroduplex method was developed to assess the presence of 16S rRNA gene (rDNA) sequences from Bacillus anthracis and close relatives in PCR-amplified 16S rDNA sequence mixtures from environmental samples. The method uses a single-stranded, fluorescent DNA probe, 464 nucleotides in length, derived from a B. anthracis 16S rRNA gene. The probe contains a unique, engineered deletion...

When washed sporulating cells of Bacillus cereus were incubated in buffer a t 37" in the presence of toluene, a partial autolysis occurred resulting in the freeing of mature and immature spores. The autolysate contained lytic enzymes which attacked vegetative cells and cell-wall preparations, releasing hexosaminecontaining peptides of characteristic constitution. The most active enzyme preparat...