Streptococcus pneumoniae is the major pathogen of community-acquired pneumonia and a common cause of otitis, meningitis and sepsis. During pneumococci infection accompanied with bacterial invasion and hematogenous spreading, the endothelium is directly targeted by pneumococci and their virulence factors. Therefore, we tested the hypothesis that pneumococci induced endothelial apoptosis. Unencap...

Views is a user-interface system in which the user interface is a layer above applications, guaranteeing consistency of the interface, and with a data-layer implementing external object representation, allowing exchange of objects between applications without loss of structure. Although Views offers an architecture to deal with user interface aspects on a high level, in this paper it is shown t...

The maltose regulon (mal regulon) has previously been shown to consist of the mal gene cluster (malMP, malXCD and malAR operons) in Streptococcus pneumoniae. In this study, we have further elucidated the complete mal regulon in S. pneumoniae D39 using microarray analyses and β-galactosidase assays. In addition to the mal gene cluster, the complete mal regulon of S. pneumoniae D39 consists of a ...

Here, we analyze the transcriptomic response of Streptococcus pneumoniae D39 to N-acetylgalactosamine (NAGa). Transcriptome comparison of S. pneumoniae D39 grown in NAGaM17 (0.5% NAGa + M17) to that grown in GM17 (0.5% Glucose + M17) revealed the elevated expression of various carbon metabolic genes/operons, including a PTS operon (denoted here as the aga operon), which is putatively involved i...

Animal studies with Streptococcus pneumoniae have provided valuable models for drug development. In order to monitor long-term pneumococcal infections noninvasively in living mice, a novel gram-positive lux transposon cassette, Tn4001 luxABCDE Km(r), that allows random integration of lux genes onto the bacterial chromosome was constructed. The cassette was designed so that the luxABCDE and kana...

In this study, we investigated the transcriptomic response of Streptococcus pneumoniae D39 to cysteine. Transcriptome comparison of the D39 wild-type grown at a restricted concentration of cysteine (0.03 mM) to one grown at a high concentration of cysteine (50 mM) in chemically-defined medium (CDM) revealed elevated expression of various genes/operons, i.e., spd-0150, metQ, spd-0431, metEF, gsh...

Pneumolysin is an important virulence factor of Streptococcus pneumoniae, interacting with the membranes of host cells to elicit a multitude of inflammatory responses. We used cDNA microarrays to identify genes which are responsive to S. pneumoniae in a pneumolysin-dependent and -independent fashion. The THP-1 human monocytic cell line was coincubated for 3 h with medium alone, with the virulen...

The occurrence of mutator phenotypes among laboratory-generated and clinical levofloxacin-resistant strains of Streptococcus pneumoniae was determined using fluctuation analysis. The in vitro selection for levofloxacin-resistant mutants of strain D39, each with point mutations in both gyrA and parC or parE, was not associated with a significant change in the mutation rate. Two of eight clinical...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES The complex interactions that occur between host and pathogen during bacteraemia caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae are not well understood. Upon entering the blood stream the pneumococcus intiates responses through contact with naïve monocytes and macrophages resulting in an inflammatory response. To elucidate the role of microbial virulence factors in the host response...