Search results for "bacteri"
showing 10 items of 5466 documents
Antibacterial Activity of Desert Truffles from Saudi Arabia Against Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa
2017
Abstract Medicinal mushrooms represent an unlimited source of polysaccharides with nutritional, antitumoral, antibacterial, and immune-stimulating properties. Traditional studies of epigeous higher Basidiomycetes have recently been joined by studies of hypogeous fungi and, in particular, of so-called desert truffles. With the aim to obtain novel agents against bacteria of clinical importance, we focused on the edible desert truffle mushrooms Tirmania pinoyi, Terfezia claveryi, and Picoa juniperi as sources of new antimicrobial agents. In particular, we investigated the in vitro antibacterial activity of acid-soluble protein extracts (aqueous extracts) of these 3 species against the Gram-pos…
Asymmetric Disulfanylbenzamides as Irreversible and Selective Inhibitors of Staphylococcus aureus Sortase A
2020
Abstract Staphylococcus aureus is one of the most frequent causes of nosocomial and community‐acquired infections, with drug‐resistant strains being responsible for tens of thousands of deaths per year. S. aureus sortase A inhibitors are designed to interfere with virulence determinants. We have identified disulfanylbenzamides as a new class of potent inhibitors against sortase A that act by covalent modification of the active‐site cysteine. A broad series of derivatives were synthesized to derive structure‐activity relationships (SAR). In vitro and in silico methods allowed the experimentally observed binding affinities and selectivities to be rationalized. The most active compounds were f…
A Silicone Ventricular Catheter Coated with a Combination of Rifampin and Trimethoprim for the Prevention of Catheter-related Infections
1998
So-called antiinfective catheters which are generated by incorporation of antimicrobial substances into polymers appear to be effectful devices in the prevention of catheter related infections. Such devices mainly act by prevention of bacterial colonization of the catheter surface rather than by inhibition of adherence. In a preceding study, we developed a rifampin-containing silicone catheter for the prevention of ventricular shunt infection. In the present study, this work was continued with a combination of antimicrobials incorporated in silicone ventricular catheters to reduce the risk of rifampin resistance and to expand the antimicrobial spectrum. We found that the drug release kineti…
Subcytocidal attack by staphylococcal alpha-toxin activates NF-kappaB and induces interleukin-8 production.
2001
ABSTRACTFormation of transmembrane pores by staphylococcal alpha-toxin can provoke a spectrum of events depending on target cell species and toxin dose, and in certain cases, repair of the lesions has been observed. Here, we report that transcriptional processes are activated as a response of cells to low toxin doses. Exposure of monocytic (THP-1) or epithelial (ECV304) cells to 40 to 160 ng/ml alpha-toxin provoked a drop in cellular ATP level that was followed by secretion of substantial amounts of interleukin-8 (IL-8). Cells transfected with constructs comprising the proximal IL-8 promoter fused to luciferase or to green fluorescent protein cDNA exhibited enhanced reporter gene expression…
The hemagglutinin of Staphylococcus saprophyticus is a major adhesin for uroepithelial cells.
1996
The 160-kDa hemagglutinin of Staphylococcus saprophyticus also serves as a fibronectin-binding protein, and the two activities may be present on different parts of the molecule. Bacteria expressing the 160-kDa hemagglutinin bound in large numbers to histological sections of human ureters, whereas nonhemagglutinating bacteria did not bind. Binding was decreased by an antiserum to the 160-kDa protein and by a preparation of sheep erythrocyte membranes. Fibronectin had no effect. We therefore conclude that binding of S. saprophyticus to uroepithelial cells is mediated by the hemagglutinating activity of the 160-kDa surface protein.
Control of biofilm formation by poly-ethylene-co-vinyl acetate films incorporating nisin.
2010
The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of poly-ethylene-co-vinyl acetate (EVA) films incorporating different concentrations (0.1%, 0.5% and 1%) of nisin on the biofilm-forming ability of Listeria monocytogenes ATCC 7644, Staphylococcus aureus 815 and Staphylococ-cus epidermidis ATCC 35984. Nisin was incorporated into two grades of EVA (EVA14 and EVA28) in the melt during a common film-blowing operation. The efficacy of EVA/nisin films was evaluated by biofilm biomass measurements and Live/Dead staining in combination with fluorescence microscopy. In order to evaluate whether the nisin incorporation could modify the film surface properties, contact angle measurements and scanning e…
Addition of selected starter/non-starter lactic acid bacterial inoculums to stabilise PDO Pecorino Siciliano cheese production
2020
Abstract The present study was carried out to produce Protected Denomination of Origin (PDO) Pecorino Siciliano cheese with a multi-species lactic acid bacteria (LAB) culture, composed of starter and non-starter strains in order to reduce the microbiological variability of the products derived without LAB inoculums. To this end, cheese samples produced in six factories located in five provinces (Agrigento, Catania, Enna, Palermo and Trapani) of Sicily, and previously characterised for physicochemical, microbiological and sensory aspects, have been investigated in this work for bacterial microbiome, fatty acid (FA) composition as well as volatile organic compound (VOC) profiles. Analysis of …
Cellular, physiological, and molecular adaptive responses of Erwinia amylovora to starvation.
2013
Erwinia amylovora causes fire blight, a destructive disease of rosaceous plants distributed worldwide. This bacterium is a nonobligate pathogen able to survive outside the host under starvation conditions, allowing its spread by various means such as rainwater. We studied E. amylovora responses to starvation using water microcosms to mimic natural oligotrophy. Initially, survivability under optimal (28 °C) and suboptimal (20 °C) growth temperatures was compared. Starvation induced a loss of culturability much more pronounced at 28 °C than at 20 °C. Natural water microcosms at 20 °C were then used to characterize cellular, physiological, and molecular starvation responses of E. amylovora. Ch…
Musket: a multistage k-mer spectrum-based error corrector for Illumina sequence data
2012
Abstract Motivation: The imperfect sequence data produced by next-generation sequencing technologies have motivated the development of a number of short-read error correctors in recent years. The majority of methods focus on the correction of substitution errors, which are the dominant error source in data produced by Illumina sequencing technology. Existing tools either score high in terms of recall or precision but not consistently high in terms of both measures. Results: In this article, we present Musket, an efficient multistage k-mer-based corrector for Illumina short-read data. We use the k-mer spectrum approach and introduce three correction techniques in a multistage workflow: two-s…
On the dimerization of the primitive tRNAs: implications in the origin of genetic code.
2002
RNAs that catalyse their own aminoacylation have been recently selected in vitro. These findings support the notion that the primitive aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases may have been RNAs. In this paper, we propose a structural model for the first aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase consisting of an RNA complex formed between two primitive tRNA molecules through two intermolecular loop-strand interactions, and with implications in the origin of the genetic code.