A novel antigen that induces cross-reactive bactericidal antibodies against a number of Neisseria meningitidis strains is described. This antigen, a approximately 28-kDa lipoprotein called LP2086, was first observed within a complex mixture of soluble outer membrane proteins (sOMPs) following a series of fractionation, protein purification, and proteomics steps. Approximately 95 different neiss...

Neisseria species are identified in most diagnostic microbiology laboratories by using carbohydrate degradation methods. Conventional methods require 24 to 48 h of incubation for completion of the test (15). A number of rapid methods which employ various agar bases, growth factors, sugar concentrations, agar concentrations, inoculum sizes, filter paper disks, radiometry, gas chromatography, spe...

Three closely related bacterial species within the genus Neisseria are of importance to human disease and health. Neisseria meningitidis is a major cause of meningitis, while Neisseria gonorrhoeae is the agent of the sexually transmitted disease gonorrhea and Neisseria lactamica is a common, harmless commensal of children. Comparative genomics have yet to yield clear insights into which factors...

The spectrum of neisserial colonisation of the pharynx was determined from 3557 throat exudates cultured on modified New York City (MNYC) medium. Oxidase positive Gram-negative diplococci (GNDC) were isolated from 1204 (33.8%) of the throat cultures. Neisseria gonorrhoeae, N meningitidis, and N lactamica accounted for 20.3%, 74.2%, and 3.7% of the oxidase positive GNDC respectively. The observe...

The effect of environmental variation on the susceptibility of Neisseria gonorrhoeae to pyocin produced by Pseudomonas aeruginosa was examined. Susceptibility to at least one pyocin was demonstrated in strains of N. gonorrhoeae (99%), N. meningitidis (35%), and N. lactamica (47%). The degree of sensitivity to pyocin displayed by N. gonorrhoeae was affected by varying the pH of the growth enviro...

iceA1 in Helicobacter pylori is a homolog of nlaIIIR, which encodes the CATG-specific restriction endonuclease NlaIII in Neisseria lactamica. Analysis of iceA1 sequences from 49 H.pylori strains shows that a full-length NlaIII-like ORF is present in 10 strains, including CH4, but in other strains, including strain 60190, the ORFs are truncated due to a variety of mutations. Our goal was to dete...