The global fight against mosquito-borne viral diseases has in recent years been bolstered by the introduction of the endosymbiotic bacteria to vector populations, which in host mosquitoes suppresses the transmissibility of several viruses. Researchers engaged on this front of the battle often need to know the infection status of individual mosquitoes, as the intervention progresses and the mosquitoes become established in the target population. Previously, we successfully applied attenuated total reflection Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy to the detection of in adult mosquitoes; here we apply the same principles to eggs, with sensitivity and selectivity > 0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDengue fever is the most common mosquito transmitted viral infection afflicting humans, estimated to generate around 390 million infections each year in over 100 countries. The introduction of the endosymbiotic bacterium Wolbachia into Aedes aegypti mosquitoes has the potential to greatly reduce the public health burden of the disease. This approach requires extensive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing of the Wolbachia-infection status of mosquitoes in areas where Wolbachia-A.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNew diagnostic modalities for malaria must have high sensitivity and be affordable to the developing world. We report on a method to rapidly detect and quantify different stages of malaria parasites, including ring and gametocyte forms, using attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FT-IR) and partial least-squares regression (PLS). The absolute detection limit was found to be 0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhosphorus (P) is a major cause of eutrophication and subsequent loss of water quality in freshwater ecosystems. A major part of the flux of P to eutrophic lake sediments is organically bound or of biogenic origin. Despite the broad relevance of polyphosphate (Poly-P) in bioremediation and P release processes in the environment, its quantification is not yet well developed for sediment samples.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis note reports the results of experiments aimed at confirming the luxury uptake of phosphorus (P) by sediment bacteria as polyphosphate (Poly-P). Aerobic suspensions of sediments from two different sites were spiked with 1 mg P/L as orthophosphate and augmented with acetate (a fermentation product) or glucose. The orthophosphate was rapidly taken up over a period of a few hours.
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