A high prevalence and diversity of avian influenza (AI) viruses were detected in a population of wild mallards sampled during summer 2011 in California, providing an opportunity to compare results obtained before and after virus culture. We tested cloacal swab samples prior to culture by matrix real-time PCR, and by amplifying and sequencing a 640bp portion of the hemagglutinin (HA) gene. Each ...

Matthew B. Thomas*, Emma L. Watson and Pablo ValverdeGarcia Department of Agricultural Sciences, Imperial College, Wye, Kent TN25 5AH, UK Centre for Population Biology, Imperial College, Silwood Park, Ascot, Berks SL5 7PY, UK Entomologı́a Agrı́cola, Departamento de Ciencias y Recursos Agrı́colas y Forestales, ETSIAM, Universidad de Córdoba, Apartado 3048, Avda. Menéndez Pidal s ⁄n, 14080 Cordoba, ...

Genomic tools have revealed genetically diverse pathogens within some hosts. Within-host pathogen diversity, which we refer to as "complex infection", is increasingly recognized as a determinant of treatment outcome for infections like tuberculosis. Complex infection arises through two mechanisms: within-host mutation (which results in clonal heterogeneity) and reinfection (which results in mix...

2 Mixed virus infections in plants are common in nature. The outcome of such virus-virus interactions ranges from cooperation and coexistence (synergism) to mutual exclusion (antagonism). A priori, the outcome of mixed infections is hard to predict. To date, the analyses of plant virus mixed infections were limited to reports of emerging symptoms and/or to qualitative, at best quantitative, des...

Mixed strain infections of Mycobacterium tuberculosis make diagnosis, treatment, and control of tuberculosis (TB) more difficult. This study was aimed to evaluate the relationship between mixed infections, antibiotic resistance patterns and treatment of TB patients. In this study, among 2850 suspected TB clinical samples, a total of ninety-six clinical samples from 66 TB confirmed patients were...

Dose response in micro-parasite infections is usually shallower than predicted by the independent action model, which assumes that each infectious unit has a probability of infection that is independent of the presence of other infectious units. Moreover, the prevalence of mixed-genotype infections was greater than predicted by this model. No probabilistic infection model has been proposed to a...