Various membrane receptors associated with the innate immune response have recently been identified as mediators of the cellular action of Staphylococcus aureus leucotoxins. Two of these, the Panton-Valentine leucotoxin LukS-PV/LukF-PV and the γ-hemolysin HlgC/HlgB, bind the C5a complement-derived peptide receptor. These leucotoxins utilize the receptor to induce intracellular Ca2+ release from...

Community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) expressing Panton-Valentine leukocidin (PVL) have been characterized worldwide, but it has not been done in Egypt. In this study, we analyzed the molecular characteristics of PVL+CA-MRSA in Egypt, compared their genetic patterns with that of PVL+ methicillin-susceptible S. aureus and PVL+CA-MRSA from different countries, a...

presencc of two loci n thc strain A']'CC 497,7S. The first locus consisted of Aig2, tttkS. and fukF (First locus). The second one consistcd oi' tukS-PV and lukFLPV (Second iocus). In a previous study, we demonstrated the presencc of five components, I to V, in S. aureus P83 and identific:d components I, Itl, IV, ttnd V as LukF. LukM, LukS, and Hvll fbr leukocidin and T-ltemolysin, respectively....

Mobile devices, laptops, and USB memory usually store large amounts of sensitive information frequently unprotected. Unauthorized access to or release of such information could reveal business secrets, users habits, non-public data or anything else. Full Disk Encryption (FDE) solutions might help users to protect sensitive data in the event that devices are lost or stolen. In this paper we focu...

INTRODUCTION Staphylococcus aureus and Staphylococcus pseudintermedius are highly important due to their capacity for producing diseases in humans and animals, respectively. The aim of the study was to investigate and characterize the coagulase positive Staphylococcus (CoPS) carriage in a Primary Healthcare Center population. METHODS Nasal swabs were obtained from 281 non-infectious patients....

Many real-world problems have interesting symmetries. Encoding these problems into CNF formulas generally results in hard SAT problems. Examples includes the pigeon hole problem, which, although very simple, is nonpolynomial for any resolution-based method when encoded into SAT [6], and the n queen problem. In order to speed up search algorithms for these problems, intrinsic symmetries should b...

We show that the problem to decide whether two (convex) polytopes are combinatorially isomorphic is graph isomorphism complete, even for simple or simplicial polytopes. On the other hand, we give a polynomial time algorithm for the polytope isomorphism problem in bounded dimension, which is based on Luks’ algorithm for the isomorphism problem of graphs of bounded maximal degree.

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) causes a wide range of infections in health care settings and community environments. In particular, community-acquired MRSA (CA-MRSA) is important for clinicians because many fatal cases in healthy populations have been reported. Staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) is a mobile genetic element and carries the central determinant for...