NYU scientists discover dangerous new method for bacterial toxi...(said go ahead but it won't work. To hi...)

"We have found that a bacteriophage can transfer genetic elements, or DNA, between unrelated bacterial species in a way that was really not expected," Dr. Novick says. Although the study uncovered only transfer to Listeria, he said the relatively high efficiency suggests that other cases may well exist in nature, raising new questions about the ease with which unrelated microbes might gain some of the more notorious S. aureus toxins. Since bacteriophages are extremely common among bacteriaa drop of seawater contains millions of bacteriophages, for exampleother combinations of disease-causing species could engage in phage-mediated toxin gene transfer.

"We happened to be looking at the nasty toxic shock toxin. As far as we know, this toxin is produced only by Staphylococcus aureus. No other species have been shown to produce it," Dr. Novick says. "If it suddenly appeared in Listeria, it could enable that species to cause toxic shock, which could have a major impact on human pathogenicity." In other words, Listeria could become an even more dangerous threat to human health.

The high frequency of genetic transfer suggested that other bits of DNA could be passed along, and the scientists showed in another experiment that staphylococcal plasmids containing antibiotic resistance genes could also be transferred to Listeria via bacteriophages.

Although Drs. Chen and Novick successfully transferred DNA from an S. aureus strain to L. monocytogenes via bacteriophages in the labusing a strain in which the gene for toxic shock toxin had been inactivated to preclude the potential hazard of toxic-shock-causing Listeriathe researchers stress that they have not yet discovered any Listeria strain that contains the transferred genetic elements or is able to produce toxic shock toxin or other staphylococcal toxins in the wild. Both microbes, however, are kno
'/>"/>