BACKGROUND Although useful for probing bacterial pathogenesis and physiology, current random mutagenesis systems suffer limitations for studying the toxin-producing bacterium Clostridium perfringens. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS An EZ-Tn5-based random mutagenesis approach was developed for use in C. perfringens. This mutagenesis system identified a new regulatory locus controlling toxin pro...

Staphylococcus aureus infections are a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in health care settings. S. aureus clinical isolates vary in the function of the accessory gene regulator (agr), which governs the expression of virulence determinants, including surface and exoproteins, while agr activity has been correlated with patient outcome and treatment efficiency. Here we describe a dupl...

The degeneracy of the genetic code allows nucleic acids to encode amino acid identity as well as noncoding information for gene regulation and genome maintenance. The rare arginine codons AGA and AGG (AGR) present a case study in codon choice, with AGRs encoding important transcriptional and translational properties distinct from the other synonymous alternatives (CGN). We created a strain of E...

BACKGROUND Several studies have highlighted the prognostic value of the albumin-globulin ratio (AGR) in various kinds of cancers. Our study was designed to assess whether AGR is associated with the prognosis of gastric cancer patients. PATIENTS AND METHODS A total of 507 gastric cancer patients between 2005 and 2012 were included. The AGR was defined as the ratio of serum albumin to nonalbumi...

The control of virulence gene expression in the human pathogen Staphylococcus aureus is under the partial control of the two-component quorum-sensing system encoded by genes of the agr locus. The product of the agrA gene has been shown by amino acid sequence similarity to be the putative response regulator; however, binding of AgrA to promoters under its control has not yet been demonstrated. I...

MgrA has been shown to affect multiple Staphylococcus aureus genes involved in virulence and antibiotic resistance. To comprehensively identify the target genes regulated by mgrA, we employed a microarray method to analyze the transcription profiles of S. aureus Newman, its isogeneic mgrA mutant, and an MgrA-overproducing derivative. We compared genes that were differentially expressed at expon...

Staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec element (SCCmec) type-dependent clinical outcomes may vary due to geographical variation in the presence of virulence determinants. We compared the microbiological factors and mortality attributed to methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteremia between SCCmec types II/III and type IV. All episodes of MRSA bacteremia in a tertiary-care hosp...

Staphylococcus aureus is generally regarded as a leading cause of mastitis in dairy cattle. The aim of this study was to investigate the pattern of agr groups and any possible relationship between agr groups and antibiotic resistance among S. aureus strains isolated from bovine mastitis in Northeast of Iran. For this purpose, a total of 300 bovine mastitic mi...

BACKGROUND Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteremia with a vancomycin minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of 2 µg/mL presents a high rate of therapeutic failure in response to vancomycin. In addition, polymorphism in accessory gene regulator (agr) is associated with vancomycin therapeutic effects. The association between agr polymorphism and vancomycin MICs was investiga...

PURPOSE Although the albumin to globulin ratio (AGR) has been proven to be a prognostic factor in several cancers, no studies have assessed its prognostic significance in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the prognostic value of the pretreatment AGR in the survival in HCC patients. METHODS 150 patients were enrolled, who were confirmed of HCC from Octo...