Antimicrobials have been used extensively as growth promoters (AGPs) in agricultural animal production. However, the specific mechanism of action for AGPs has not yet been determined. The work presented here was to determine and characterize the microbiome of pigs receiving one AGP, tylosin, compared with untreated pigs. We hypothesized that AGPs exerted their growth promoting effect by alterin...

Introduction Conclusions References

Genetic oscillators are a major theme of interest in the emerging field of synthetic biology. Until recently, most work has been carried out using intra-cellular oscillators, but this approach restricts the broader applicability of such systems. Motivated by a desire to develop large-scale, spatially distributed cell-based computational systems, we present an initial design for a population-lev...

Quorum-sensing (QS) has been extensively studied in the context of synthetic biology (Basu et al., 2005; Danino et al., 2010; Garcia-Ojalvo et al., 2004). It enables a community-level response to emerge once a certain signal concentration threshold has been reached. We use QS to design a multi-strain, engineered bacterial community with autonomous behaviour. We model our system on the familiar ...

Bacteria are involved in the onset and progression of periodontitis. A promising molecular technique, denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE), to study microbial population dynamics in the subgingival pocket is presented. Twenty-three samples were taken from the subgingival pockets of nine patients and six healthy family members. From four periodontitis patients, 12 samples were evaluate...

Knowledge concerning the microbial characteristics of natural and post-vacuum extracted ombrotrophic peatlands, as well as peatlands under restoration is limited. In one experiment, microbial comparisons of paired neighboring natural and post-vacuum peatlands in eastern Québec (Canada) were studied to assess the effects of peat mining on microbial indicators and nitrogen (N) cycling. Microbial ...