coli

Learning to fight an adversary that won't stay down

... of new pathogen varieties like multi-resistant E. coli and Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), the bacterium that causes methicillin-resistant tuberculosis, provide good examples of the challenges we face, says Dr. Davies. Ironically, he says, advances in molecular biology techniques have shown just how adept...

Jumping gene helps explain immune system's abilities

...iscovered in experiments in test tubes and with E. coli bacteria.Although this loop distances Hermes from its well-studied cousins, theHermes protein still has an important family trait, the researchersreport. Colleagues at the National Institutes of Health found that afew key building blocks in the prote...

UCSD Discovery Shows How Embryonic Stem Cells Perform 'Quality Control' Inspections

...iscovered in experiments in test tubes and with E. coli bacteria.Although this loop distances Hermes from its well-studied cousins, theHermes protein still has an important family trait, the researchersreport. Colleagues at the National Institutes of Health found that afew key building blocks in the prote...

New therapy for HIV/AIDS eliminates needles and excessive toxicity

...iscovered in experiments in test tubes and with E. coli bacteria.Although this loop distances Hermes from its well-studied cousins, theHermes protein still has an important family trait, the researchersreport. Colleagues at the National Institutes of Health found that afew key building blocks in the prote...

Gene sequencing explains bioremediation 'bug'

...iscovered in experiments in test tubes and with E. coli bacteria.Although this loop distances Hermes from its well-studied cousins, theHermes protein still has an important family trait, the researchersreport. Colleagues at the National Institutes of Health found that afew key building blocks in the prote...

Rats infected as newborns grew up vulnerable to memory problems during an immune challenge

...ke symptoms,. This time, the rats infected with E. coli as newborns froze 70 percent less often than the rats who'd been injected with salt water as newborns. In other words, under immune stress, the early-infected rats learned to fear the place where they'd been shocked significantly less often than rats...

Multiple Campylobacter Genomes Sequenced

...problems. But the illness can also be caused by C. coli (also found in cattle, swine, and birds), C. upsal...NCTC 11168 and with the unfinished sequences of C. coli strain RM2228 (a multi-drug-resistant chicken isolate), C. lari strain RM2100 (a clinical isolate), ...

Programmable cells: Engineer turns bacteria into living computers

...ss and graduate student Subhayu Basu programmed E. coli bacteria to emit red or green fluorescent light in response to a signal emitted from another set of E. coli. In one experiment, the cells glowed green when they sensed a higher concentration of the signal chemical and red when they sensed a lower con...

Key mechanism in genetic inheritance during cell division identified

...1 complex, obtained from genetically engineered E. coli bacteria, and compared its effects on microtubules in vitro to the effects caused by certain Dam1 mutants. Their analysis shed new light on the structural nature of the kinetochore-microtubule interface, and may provide a biochemical explanation for ...

To Stop Evolution: New Way Of Fighting Antibiotic Resistance Demonstrated By Scripps Scientists

...a protein called LexA in the bacterium Escherichia coli promotes mutations and helps the pathogen evolve r...e to antibiotics. The scientists also show that E. coli evolution could be halted in its tracks by subjecting the bacteria to compounds that block LexA. Int...

Bee mites suppress bee immunity, open door for viruses and bacteria

...he bee immune system. They injected heat-killed E. coli bacteria into virus-infected bees that were either infested with bee mites or mite free. The dead bacteria was used to trigger an immune response in the bees in the same way human vaccines cause our bodies to produce an immune response. They checked ...

Brown-Harvard team solves mobile DNA's surgical sleight-of-hand

...bda virus, which infects and lives off Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria. The findings are important be...r player in the process, literally snipping the E. coli DNA strands before insertion and then sealing them up afterward. The research also suggests how thre...

Say what? Bacterial conversation stoppers

...overed. In earlier work, Xavier had found that E. coli both produces and consumes AI-2. In this study, she set up an experiment where multitudes of E. coli first produced then devoured enough AI-2 to dim the lights of the marine bacteria, essentially fool...

Bacteria are key to 'green' plastics, drugs

...ses a genetically modified form of the bacteria E. coli that metabolizes glucose and produces almost pure ...Rice's succinate technology is a mutant form of E. coli that makes succinate as it's only metabolic byproduct. The bug contains more than a half-dozen genet...

Gene Bridges And Covalys To Develop Restriction-Enzyme-Free SNAP-tag Gene Fusion Kits

... of targeting vectors, modification of BACs and E. coli chromosomes, as well as viral engineering. Gene Bridges, an EMBL spin-off, is headquartered in Dresden, Germany and maintains a commercial centre is in Heidelberg. For more information, visit: www.genebridges.com ...

Researchers uncover E. coli's defense mechanism

...o Salmonella bacteria. The pathogenic forms of E. coli and Salmonella are usually transmitted to humans through undercooked meat, unwashed vegetables and cross contamination from surfaces on which these foods were prepared. Infections from either of these organisms can cause diarrhea, abdominal cramps an...

New technique rapidly detects illness-causing bacteria

...iety of bacterial pathogens, including Escherichia coli (E. coli ). The new biosensor works in a test tube and a positive result shows up as a red line on a strip, ...

Tagging pathogens with synthetic DNA 'barcodes'

...is added to a solution containing, for example, E. coli bacterial DNA, only probes with a particular color code will be programmed to bind to that DNA. The results can be seen under a fluorescent light microscope using colored filters that pass only one color at a time. A signal in which the ratio of inte...

Beyond genes: Lipid helps cell wall protein fold into proper shape

...ic proteins associated with it. In a strain of E. coli lacking PE, the GabP protein misfolded, with two a...cent compared to the transfer rate in unaltered E. coli with PE. GabP is the third membrane protein that Dowhan and colleagues have shown to be affected by...

One bacteria stops another on contact

...s that when turned on block the growth of other E. coli bacteria that they touch. The finding was a comple...are present in E. coli, including uropathogenic E. coli that cause urinary tract infections, and similar genes may be present in other pathogens such as the...

The very defensive caterpillar

...r to be able to persist from the initial benign E. coli infection and then confer resistance against the second, usually lethal, infection by the pathogen. Using RNAi techniques workers at the University of Bath have shown that several different proteins can confer this protective effect against subsequen...

'Underground' tunnels discovered as means for communication between immune system cells

... microinjection tip, they squirted a mixture of E. coli fragments into a culture dish, and, indeed, one to...ic cells, macrophages and a small amount of the E. coli mixture in the same culture dish. The dendritic cells, as would be expected, fluxed calcium in respo...

Researchers find how some antibiotics kill bacteria

...d at the effects of rifapentin and rifabutin on E. coli RNA polymerase. With recent advances in X-ray crystallographic studies of RNA polymerase, the researchers could determine exactly where and how both antibiotics bound to RNA polymerase in E. coli, and what it did to that polymerase as a result. The...

Scientists create digital bacteria to forge advances in biomedical research

...nts necessary to search for food. These digital E. coli contain their own chemotaxis system, which transmits the biochemical signals responsible for cellular locomotion. They also have flagella, the whiplike appendages that cells use for propulsion, and the motors to drive them. Emonet and his associates...

Einstein researchers identify new way that bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics

...s similar to MfpA are also present in Shigella, E. coli and other disease-causing bacteria that have developed fluoroquinolone resistance. "Our study shows that this novel bacterial mechanism is responsible for the rapid spread of fluoroquinolone resistance that is making hospital-acquired infections so ...

Hurricane aftermath: Infectious disease threats from common, not exotic, diseases

...r. Although at high levels in floodwaters, the E. coli found in New Orleans is the type commonly associated with fecal contamination and is not the E. coli H7:O157 strain that can cause serious kidney disease and bloody diarrhea. "At this point in time, I...

A step toward the $1,000 personal genome using readily available lab equipment

...line edition of Science. The team sequenced the E. coli bacterial genome at a fraction of the cost of conventional sequencing using off-the-shelf instruments and chemical reagents. Their technology appears to be even more accurate and less costly than a commercial DNA decoding technology reported earlier ...

Study findings offer potential new targets for antibiotics

...hicago. Fredrick provided a strain of Escherichia coli important for the study. In order to find out if ...uced a mutated copy of the ribosomal genes into E. coli cells and looked for those rare mutations that could interfere with cell growth. It was known from p...

DNA size a crucial factor in genetic mutations, study finds

...ural thymine, both in the test tube and in live E. coli bacteria. In contrast to this, the smallest and largest analogs in the set were rejected by the enzyme and the bacteria. According to Kool, these results indicate that size is a strong factor determining enzyme efficiency-and a mechanism for allowi...

A bug's life: Exceptional genomic stability yet rapid protein evolution in a carpenter ant mutualist

...nd translocation. In comparison, the genomes of E. coli and Salmonella, which diverged between 100-150 million years ago, have undergone extensive changes in their genomic architecture. Interestingly, the observations of Wernegreen regarding B. pennsylvanicus were consistent with those previously describe...

Student scientists create living bacterial photographs

...ing Petri dishes full of genetically engineered E. coli instead of photo paper, students at The University...gical film"--billions of genetically engineered E. coli growing in dishes of agar, a standard jello-like growth medium for bacteria. Like pixels on a comp...

War on terror meets war on cancer

...tside a cell," Hegg says. The researchers grew E. coli bacteria at body temperature in flasks containing ... 30 percent of the water inside rapidly growing E. coli came from outside the bacteria and 70 percent of the water was produced by metabolism inside the bac...

Zooming in on the protein-conducting channel

...chers created a complex comprising the PCC from E. coli attached to a ribosome that contained a newly forming protein segment. The ribosome is the massive protein-RNA complex that constitutes the cell's protein-making machinery. Mitra explored the structure of this PCC-ribosome complex using three-dimens...

Novel protein complex enables survival in hostile environment

... an energy transduction system is also found in E. coli and humans," Mukhopadhyay said. "Fsr-C is similar to the sulfite reductases that are found in certain bacteria and archaea. These previously described sulfite reductases do not use coenzyme F420 as the electron source and are also not tethered to the...

Free-energy theory borne out in large-scale protein folding

...tein, or MLAc, a variant of the protein used by E. coli to regulate expression of the proteins that transport and metabolize lactose. MLAc contains about 360 amino acids. While scientists know proteins containing 100 or fewer amino acids fold in a very cooperative (all-or-none) fashion, it is believed th...

How E. coli bacterium generates simplicity from complexity

The ubiquitous and usually harmless E. coli bacterium, which has one-seventh the number of gen...tional Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that Escherichia coli doesn't gamble with its metabolism. In a surprise about E. coli that may offer clues about how hum...

Worms know bad food when they smell it

... had been exposed only to a harmless strain of E. coli for their entire lives. The other two groups had ...s. When the worms that had been grown only on E. coli were later introduced to pathogenic bacteria (either P. aeruginosa or S. marcescens ), they were ...

Pair of studies offer new clues to combat antibiotic resistance

... in Germany genetically engineered a strain of E. coli so that it lacks its normal outer protective laye...ack. Removal of this layer is believed to make E. coli and other gram-negative bacteria more vulnerable to antibiotic attack, the scientists say. "The st...

Rochester scientists develop fast-working biosensor

...tects the meat-spoiling and sometimes dangerous E. coli bacteria. The unique technology uses a protein fr...seen as a "molecular harpoon," Miller said. The E. coli sends out the harpoon into a cell. Once it is in the cell, the Tir then binds with an E. coli protei...

Common bacteria pirate natural mechanism to get inside cells

...ommon bladder infection-producing uropathogenic E. coli as a model to show how nitric oxide unwittingly as...erial uptake and survival. "In bladder cells, E. coli uses this mechanism to get inside the cells and hide from the antibiotic effect and the immune syste...

Lack of a key enzyme dramatically increases resistance to sepsis

...three times more susceptible to lethal Escherichia coli infection than normal mice. Consequently, the study said, sepsis resistance in caspase-12 deficient mice was most likely due to an initial hyper-production of cytokines that fight the infection. "The resulting beneficial effect of cytokine hyper-p...

Common practices at petting zoos put visitors at risk

...lts of a case-control study of an outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 associated with two Florida petting zoos, in which they interviewed visitors who did and did not get sick to identify which behaviors were predictors of infection. Some behaviors that were most strongly associated with illness were feeding ...

Scientists seek to unwrap the sweet mystery of the sugar coat on bacteria

...ab strains of E. coli, one pathogenic strain of E. coli that causes neonatal meningitis, and Salmonella typhimurium, which causes food poisoning. They analyzed each strain of bacteria using lectin microarrays--small glass plates covered with dots of sugar-binding proteins called lectins. The lectin dots ...

Molecule by molecule, new assay shows real-time gene activity

... for the well-studied lacZ gene in the Escherichia coli chromosome. When lacZ's regulatory machinery allows the modified gene to be converted into a handful of protein molecules, these Tsr-Venus hybrids migrate to the cell membrane, where each attaches firmly. The clearly visible flash from each Tsr-Venus...

Removing DNA repair gene causes metabolic syndrome

... clone and crystallize homologs to the Escherichia coli endonuclease VIII gene. E. coli endonuclease VIII is part of a pathway of enzymes involved in repairing DNA damaged by free radicals...

MBL leads effort to update E. coli genome

...ns, are often understood by their similarity to E. coli genes. As such, the accuracy and completeness of ...comprehensive, updated description of all 4,500 E. coli K-12 genes. The data is presented in the January 5, 2006 online issue of the journal Nucleic Acids ...

U-M researchers take new approach to defeating Gram-negative bugs

...his research team genetically modified Escherichia coli bacteria, known as a Gram-negative bug, to weaken ...lague. Woodard and his collaborators worked on E. coli in part because it is one of the more common Gram-negative bacteria, and it is considered by researc...

Evolution follows few of the possible paths to antibiotic resistance

...g how well each variant protected host Escherichia coli cells against treatment with various concentrations of antibiotic, the scientists found that only a very small fraction of these pathways confer ever-increasing resistance in pathogenic microbes, and are therefore relevant to natural selection. Resi...

Researchers discover way to transport environmental arsenic to plant leaves in new clean-up strategy

...inserted two unrelated genes from the bacterium E. coli called arsC and ECS into Arabidopsis, a model lab plant and small member of the mustard family. This allowed the plants to resist the toxic effects of arsenic and sequester three-fold more arsenic in their shoots than normal plants. Still this was to...

Tiny shock absorbers help bacteria stick around inside the body

...witzerland have been studying how the bacterium E. coli attaches to mucous membranes in the body. In their...imbriae also play a key role in the tenacity of E. coli clinging to mucousal surfaces. The tiny fiber-like protrusions are made up of interlocking protein s...

Purdue creates new low-cost system to detect bacteria

...cterial colonies, including salmonella, vibrio, E. coli and bacillus. "We were able to classify bacterial colonies with greater than a 90 percent probability of being correct, which is as good as you could do with equipment costing more than $100,000, " Rajwa said. "And, unlike conventional systems, our...

DNA: Bacteria's survival ration

The ubiquitous bacteria E. coli rank among nature's most successful species for lo...hern California have added another: in a pinch, E. coli can feast on the DNA of their dead competitors. A research team led by Steven Finkel, assistant pro...

Super-sized cassava plants may help fight hunger in Africa

... The researchers used a gene from the bacterium E. coli to genetically modify cassava plants. The plants, ...0s.) They inserted into three cassava plants an E. coli gene that controls starch production. A non-modified fourth plant served as a control. "Cassava act...

Protein clue to tailor-made antibiotics

...t a type of biological warfare. Bacteria like E. coli frequently try to kill each other when resources are scarce using protein antibiotics called colicins, which are potent toxins. The research led by Professor Colin Kleanthous has discovered a critical element in the mode of action of a class of co...

BGSU biologist trying to crack microscopic code

... and his graduate assistants do their work with E. coli bacteria, which he calls "the world's best Lego se...areas. The problem, however, is that laboratory E. coli are the "98-pound weaklings in the real world," not offering barriers as robust as other bacteria ma...

Breaks in hibernation help fight bugs

...el that mimicked the growth of bacteria such as E. coli and Salmonella in European ground squirrels, and how it affected their torpor patterns in relation to temperature. Microbial growth depends on temperature. Most bacteria grow faster when it is warm and much slower when it is cold. For animals ex...

Molecular DNA switch found to be the same for all life

...tor" of DNA replication in a bacteria, Escherichia coli (E. coli), and in a eukaryote, Drosophila melanogaster, the fruit fly. Taken with earlier research that identified AAA+ proteins at the heart of the DNA replication initiator in archaea organisms, these new findings indicate that DNA replication is...

Basic work on E. coli identifies two new keys to regulation of bacterial gene expression

...rase, according to work done with the bacterium E. coli and published today (June 16) in the journal Cell ...isms, and adds to the wealth of knowledge about E. coli contributed by scientists from the UW-Madison. "The kinds of processes that we study in E. coli hap...

Transgenic goat's milk offers hope for tackling children's intestinal disease

...n the small intestine, including fewer Escherichia coli (E. coli), than did the control group of young pig...ilk from non-transgenic goats. Some strains of E. coli can cause severe intestinal illness. However, the kid goats fed lysozyme-rich goat's milk, had hig...

Leptin found to control appetite and limb development in frogs

... they solved those issues and put the gene into E. coli bacteria to make quantities of leptin, the frog protein turned out to be functionally very similar to the human version, Denver notes. "It would appear that leptin and its role as an energy balance indicator has been around a long time," Denver sai...