host

Scientists discover that host cell lipids facilitate bacterial movement

When the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes invades the body, it commandeers its host cell's actin cytoskeleton to invade other cells. In a report published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, a group of scientists provide insight into the molecular mechanisms behind this infection technique. The research appears as the "Paper of the Week" in the March 25 issue of the Journal of Biologic...

A new study examines how shared pathogens affect host populations

Many pathogens are able to infect multiple species within a community and are commonly transmitted across species. Cross-species transmission is often associated with pathogen emergence and therefore has been considered as a negative factor for humans, wildlife, and species of agricultural importance. Many pathogens like malaria, Lyme disease or West Nile encephalitis that infect multiple hosts a...

Edible bivalves as a source of human pathogens: signals between vibrios and the bivalve host.

Clams, mussels and oysters are important vehicles for the transmission of enteric diseases when consumed raw or undercooked. Vibrio species, including human pathogens, are particularly abundant in bivalve tissues, where they can persist even after cleaning procedures, thus representing a potential risk for human health. Although different environmental factors are well known to affect the persist...

Virus-host interactions at sea effect global photosynthesis

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) today announced that it has for the first time released the chip design, probe sequence and annotation information for all of its microarrays. The release of this information is expected to improve cross-laboratory experimental research and cross-platform data comparison. "Full release of the probe sequences is an admirable and responsible position for A...

Bacteria use host's immune response to their competitive advantage

Millions of bacteria live within the recesses of our noses and upper respiratory tracts, waiting for a chance to infiltrate and infect. But long before these bacteria break through our immune defenses, they must first compete against other bacterial species to colonize the mucus-lined surfaces of our noses. Competition between two common nose bacteria involves some interesting trickery, ac...

Variation in HIV's ability to disable host defenses contributes to rapid evolution

One of the reasons HIV is so difficult to contain and treat is its rapid evolution. Understanding how host defenses and viral countermeasures contribute to that evolution is vital. Vif is full o...

Scientists show that tick-borne flaviviruses use a novel mechanism to evade host defenses

Researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, have made the surprising discovery that flaviviruses, which cause such serious diseases as West Nile fever, yellow fever and forms of encephalitis, evade immune system defenses in different ways depending on whether they are transmitted by mosquitoes or ticks. This findin...

Vineyard weeds found to host Pierce's disease of grapes

New research just released in the September issue of Plant Disease suggests that weeds commonly found in California's wine country may enable the spread of Pierce's disease of grapes, one of the most destructive plant diseases affecting grapes. Pierce's disease is caused by Xylella fastidiosa, a bacterium transmitted by sharpshooters and spittlebugs. In response to outbreaks of Pierce's di...

CO2 sensing proves critical for fungal pathogens to adapt to life in air and human hosts

By using pathogenic fungi as model systems for understanding fungal diseases, two groups of researchers are reporting new work that offers insight into how carbon dioxide (CO2) governs the morphogenic changes that allow pathogenic fungi to survive in different environments and invade the human body, and they provide new evidence for how CO2 sensing and metabolism utilize evolutionarily conserved...

Bacterial protein mimics host to cripple defenses

Like a wolf in sheep's clothing, a protein from a disease-causing bacterium slips into plant cells and imitates a key host protein in order to cripple the plant's defenses. This discovery, reported in this week's Science Express by researchers at the Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) for Plant Research, advances the understanding of a disease mechanism common to plants, animals, and people. T...

Novel protein complex enables survival in hostile environment

Biswarup Mukhopadhyay and Eric Johnson from the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech have discovered a novel enzyme that represents an ancient detoxification system and provides a clue to the development of early metabolism on earth. The research appears in the Nov. 18, 2005 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, in the article "A New Type of Sulfite Reductase, a Novel...

Web model of influenza-host lifecycles will aid scientists in creating anti-viral drugs

A "starry sky" map linking the myriad interactions between the influenza virus and its human host will help guide researchers in creating new anti-viral drugs, say researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center. The on-line map, part of a project called Reactome, is intended to teach scientists about parts of the influenza lifecycle they might not be familiar with, and to help researchers...

HIV accessory protein disables host immunity via receptor-protein intermediary

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine discovered that an HIV-1 accessory protein called Vpr destroys the host cell's ability to survive by binding to a host receptor. This, in turn, keeps an important enzyme from activating the cell's immune system. These findings refine an earlier understanding of Vpr HIV pathogenesis and imply new approaches to treating AIDS, inflamma...

Ghost protein leaves fresh tracks in the cell

Spectrin and ankyrin are two essential proteins acting like bricks and mortar to shape and fortify cell membranes. But distinguishing which protein is the brick and which is the mortar has turned out to be difficult. New evidence suggests that spectrin can do both jobs at once. Ron Dubreuil, associate professor of biological sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, reports the fi...

Parasitic plants sniff out hosts

Parasitic plants do not haphazardly flail about looking for a host but sense volatile chemicals produced by other plants and identify potential hosts by their emissions, according to a team of Penn State chemical ecologists. "We are interested in how plants respond to their environment, and have looked at plant insect interactions," says Dr. Consuelo M. De Moraes, assistant professor of en...

Hopkins scientists link immune response to 'ghost' parasites and severely congested sinuses

Although it's unclear why it's so, scientists at Johns Hopkins have linked a gene that allows for the chemical breakdown of the tough, protective casing that houses insects and worms to the severe congestion and polyp formation typical of chronic sinusitis. A team of Hopkins sinus experts has found that the gene for the enzyme, acidic mammalian chitinase (AMCase), is up to 250 times mor...

Parasites' impact goes beyond host to affect ecosystem

The good news, if you’re grazing normally on algae in the rocky intertidal zone of the North Atlantic, is that you may not be infected by a parasite. But the better news is, according to new research from the University of New Hampshire, that you might have more to eat if plenty of your neighbors are infected. The research, published in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sc...

New host species for avian influenza identified

In a new study published online in the open-access journal PLoS Pathogens, Dr. Vincent J. Munster, of Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, and colleagues identify new host species for avian influenza A virus (H5N1) and provide important information on the distinctions between the ecology and epidemiology of various global strains of the virus. An eight-year surveillance study, which included...

Scientists discover rare 'gene-for-gene' interaction that helps bacteria kill their host

Scientists have discovered that a cousin of the plague bacterium uses a single gene to out-fox insect immune defences and kill its host. In research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, scientists have found that Photorhabdus bacteria produce an antibiotic which inhibits the work of an enzyme that insects' immune systems use to defend themselves from att...

How plague-causing bacteria disarm host defense

Now, researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine have identified a novel molecular target for an effector protein calle...