The Microbiology Unit of Southern Cross Pathology Australia, Monash Medical Centre, has used the Organon Technika BacTAlert automated blood culture instrument since 1995 for the detection of causative organisms of septicemia and bacteremia. When a blood culture bottle is flagged as positive, it is removed from the instrument and subculturing and Gram staining are performed. Gram-positive cocci,...

A deletion of the sigB operon was constructed in three genetically distinct Staphylococcus aureus strains, and the phenotypes of the resulting mutants were analyzed. Compared to the corresponding wild-type strains, the DeltasigB mutants showed reduced pigmentation, accelerated sedimentation, and increased sensitivity to hydrogen peroxide during the stationary growth phase. A cytoplasmic protein...

In veterinary medicine, coagulase-positive staphylococci (CoPS) other than Staphylococcus aureus have frequently been misidentified as being S. aureus strains, as they have several phenotypic traits in common. There has been no reliable method to distinguish among CoPS species in veterinary clinical laboratories. In the present study, we sequenced the thermonuclease (nuc) genes of staphylococca...

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection has reached epidemic proportions, and therapeutic options are limited because these strains are often multidrug resistant. However, the new strains of community-acquired MRSA show decreased resistance to trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole. Clinical and experimental reports show a mixture of successes and failures with trimethoprim-sulfamet...

Acute gonorrhea is characterized by neutrophilic inflammation that is insufficient to clear Neisseria gonorrhoeae. Activated neutrophils release extracellular traps (NETs), which are composed of chromatin and decorated with antimicrobial proteins. The N. gonorrhoeae NG0969 open reading frame contains a gene (nuc) that encodes a putatively secreted thermonuclease (Nuc) that contributes to biofil...