background: echinococcosis or hydatidosis is a chronic, zoonotic worldwide infection that occurs by the larval stages of taeniid cestodes of the genus echinococcus . iran is known as endemic region for this infection in the world. vaccination has been considered as a good prevention method for this disease. recombinant vaccines containing eg95 protein, against e. granulosus , has shown a high d...

The prevalence of virulent Rhodococcus equi in soil isolates from two horse farms in South Africa and nine clinical isolates from six foals, a foal foetus, a dog, and a monkey was investigated. The isolates were tested for the presence of virulence plasmid DNA and 15- to 17-kDa antigens by immunoblotting. Rhodococcus equi was isolated from almost all of the soil samples obtained from the two fa...

Rhodococcus equi is a gram-positive bacterium that infects alveolar macrophages and causes rhodococcal pneumonia in horses and humans. The virulence plasmid of R. equi appears to be required for both pathogenicity in the horse and the induction of protective immunity. An understanding of the mechanisms by which virulent R. equi circumvents protective host responses and by which bacteria are ult...

R loop hybridizations and electron microscopy have been used to determine cellular RNA concentrations for cloned genes. In plasmid DNA sequence excess, all the complementary RNA is driven into R loop structures that can be assayed by electron microscopy. To determine the concentration of a particular poly(A)+ RNA, plasmid DNA crosslinked once every 2000-5000 base pairs with trioxsalen and UV li...

We used the sequence-specific endonucleases EcoRI, SmaI, BamHI, HsuI, and HaeIII as identification tools in following the conjugal transfer of the well-studied R plasmids Sa, R388, RP4, and R6K. Transfers were both intergeneric and intrageneric. Plasmid fingerprints were generated from both single- and combination-enzyme digests. The Sa transconjugants yielded plasmids showing consistent finger...

Plasmid pSt04 of Streptococcus thermophilus contains a gene encoding a protein with homology to small heat shock proteins (A. Geis, H. A. M. El Demerdash, and K. J. Heller, Plasmid 50:53-69, 2003). Strains cured from the shsp plasmids showed significantly reduced heat and acid resistance and a lower maximal growth temperature. Transformation of the cloned shsp gene into S. thermophilus St11 lac...