The effects of the accessory gene regulator (agr) and glucose on staphylococcal enterotoxin type C (SEC) gene (sec+) expression were examined. For the agr studies, a Tn551 insertionally inactivated agr was transferred into two different sec+ Staphylococcus aureus strains. Western blot (immunoblot) analysis showed that each of the sec+ Agr- derivatives produced less extracellular SEC than their ...

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is one of the leading causes of nosocomial infections and a major public health concern worldwide. During the last decade, MRSA of CC398 have emerged as important colonizers of livestock. These strains also represent an increasing cause of human infections. A recent study reporting a new dominant spa type among MRSA from Finish fattening pigs (...

This work quantifies the agricultural water footprint (WF) of production (WFprod, agr) and consumption (WFcons, agr) and the resulting net virtual water import (netVWi, agr) of 365 European river basins for a reference period (REF, 1996–2005) and two diet scenarios (a healthy diet based upon food-based dietary guidelines (HEALTHY) and a vegetarian (VEG) diet). In addition to total (tot) amounts...

Background & Objective: Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is reported as one of the important bacterial causes of burn wound infections. This study was carried out to investigate molecular characterization of community-associated MRSA (CA-MRSA) isolated from Iranian burn patients. Methods: A total of 31 isolates of S. aureus<...

The molecular characteristics of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) isolated from neonates in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) were investigated by multilocus sequence typing (MLST), staphylocoagulase (SC) genotyping, staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) typing, accessory gene regulator (agr) typing, and the presence of Panton-Valentine leukocidin (PVL). Among th...

In this retrospective analysis, we evaluated associations between albumin to globulin ratio (AGR), clinicopathological characteristics, and survival in 592 patients with localized or locally advanced clear cell renal cell carcinoma (CCRCC) prior to nephrectomy. We found that low AGR was associated with more aggressive tumor behavior; patients with low AGR had poorer overall survival (OS) and ca...

Staphylococcus aureus can cause numerous different diseases, which has been attributed to its large repertoire of virulence factors, many of which are under the control of the accessory gene regulator (agr) quorum sensing system. Under conditions of high cell density, agr increases the production of many virulence factors, decreases expression of several colonization factors, and is intimately ...

Most verification tools and methodologies such as model checking, equivalence checking, hardware verification, software verification, and hardware-software coverification often flatten out the behavior of a target system before verification. Inherent modularities, either explicit or implicit, functional or structural, are not exploited by these tools and algorithms. In this work, we show how as...

We used multiplex PCR to determine the agr group membership of 18 European glycopeptide heterointermediate and intermediate-resistant Staphylococcus aureus strains. Of the 15 agr group I strains, 13 were resistant and 2 were susceptible to methicillin. The remaining three strains, like the United States and Japanese control strains, belonged to agr group II.