Epidemiological Characterization of Isolates of and Shiga Toxin-Producing from Backyard Production System Animals in the Valparaíso and Metropolitana Regions.

Backyard production systems (BPS) are distributed worldwide, rearing animals recognized as reservoirs of and Shiga toxin-producing (STEC), both zoonotic pathogens. The aim of this study was to characterize isolates of both pathogens obtained from animals raised in BPS from two central Chile regions. The presence of pathogens was determined by bacterial culture and confirmatory PCR for each sampled BPS, calculating positivity rates.

What Do We Know about Surface Proteins of Chicken Parasites ?

Poultry is the first source of animal protein for human consumption. In a changing world, this sector is facing new challenges, such as a projected increase in demand, higher standards of food quality and safety, and reduction of environmental impact. Chicken coccidiosis is a highly widespread enteric disease caused by spp.

Next-Generation Technologies and Systems Biology for the Design of Novel Vaccines Against Apicomplexan Parasites.

Parasites of the phylum Apicomplexa are the causative agents of important diseases such as malaria, toxoplasmosis or cryptosporidiosis in humans, and babesiosis and coccidiosis in animals. Whereas the first human recombinant vaccine against malaria has been approved and recently recommended for wide administration by the WHO, most other zoonotic parasitic diseases lack of appropriate immunoprophylaxis. Sequencing technologies, bioinformatics, and statistics, have opened the "omics" era into apicomplexan parasites, which has led to the development of systems biology, a recent field that can significantly contribute to more rational design for new vaccines.

Molecular diagnosis of Leishmania spp. in dogs of a subtropical locality of Argentina.

Leishmaniosis is a tropical and subtropical vector-borne disease caused by hemoparasites of the genus Leishmania. The disease can infect humans, as well as domestic and wildlife animals. Dogs are the main reservoir for L.

The glycosylphosphatidylinositol-anchored protein repertoire of Babesia bovis and its significance for erythrocyte invasion.

Glycosylphosphatidylinositol-anchored proteins are abundant on the surface of pathogenic protozoans and might play an important role for parasite survival. In the present work, the relevance of GPI-anchored proteins for erythrocyte invasion of the cattle hemoparasite Babesia bovis was studied. We show that cleavage of GPI-anchored antigens from the merozoite parasite stage by phosphatidylinositol-specific phospholipase C abolished invasion of erythrocytes demonstrating the importance of this class of molecules for parasite propagation.

Babesia bovis contains an abundant parasite-specific protein-free glycerophosphatidylinositol and the genes predicted for its assembly.

Autonomous glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI) molecules (also protein-free GPIs or free GPIs) have been reported to be particularly abundant in some parasitic protozoa and mediate strong immunomodulatory effects on the host immune system. In the work at hand we have investigated the existence of free GPIs in Babesia bovis. Comparative thin layer chromatographic analysis of the protein-free glycolipid fraction of in vitro cultured B.