Indigenous food sources as vectors of Escherichia coli and antibiotic resistance.

The contamination of surface waters by fecal bacteria, measured by the number of Escherichia coli, is a significant public health issue. When these bacteria are also resistant to antimicrobials, infections are more complicated to treat. While water is regularly tested at recreational sites, wild-harvested foods, known as mahinga kai by the indigenous Māori people of Aotearoa New Zealand, are commonly overlooked as a source of exposure to potential pathogens and antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

Draft Genome Sequences of 15 Multidrug-Resistant Escherichia coli Strains Isolated from Indigenous Foods and Food-Gathering Sites in Aotearoa, New Zealand.

We report the draft genomes of 15 multidrug-resistant and potentially pathogenic Escherichia coli strains isolated from watercress, cockles, or the surrounding water in Aotearoa, New Zealand.

Prevalence of antibiotic-resistant Escherichia coli isolated from urban and agricultural streams in Canterbury, New Zealand.

Baseline studies are needed to identify environmental reservoirs of non-pathogenic but associating microbiota or pathogenic bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics and to inform safe use of freshwater ecosystems in urban and agricultural settings. Mesophilic bacteria and Escherichia coli were quantified and isolated from water and sediments of two rivers, one in an urban and one in an agricultural area near Christchurch, New Zealand. Resistance of E.

Effects of sub-lethal concentrations of copper ammonium acetate, pyrethrins and atrazine on the response of to antibiotics.

Antibiotic resistance in human and animal pathogens is mainly the outcome of human use of antibiotics. However, bacteria are also exposed to thousands of other antimicrobial agents. Increasingly those exposures are being investigated as co-selective agents behind the rapid rise and spread of resistance in bacterial pathogens of people and our domesticated animals.

Agrichemicals and antibiotics in combination increase antibiotic resistance evolution.

Antibiotic resistance in our pathogens is medicine's climate change: caused by human activity, and resulting in more extreme outcomes. Resistance emerges in microbial populations when antibiotics act on phenotypic variance within the population. This can arise from either genotypic diversity (resulting from a mutation or horizontal gene transfer), or from differences in gene expression due to environmental variation, referred to as adaptive resistance.

Herbicide ingredients change sv. Typhimurium and antibiotic responses.

Herbicides are frequently released into both rural and urban environments. Commercial herbicide formulations induce adaptive changes in the way bacteria respond to antibiotics. sv.

Exploring the parameters of post-segregational killing using heterologous expression of secreted toxin barnase and antitoxin barstar in an Escherichia coli case study.

Post-segregational killing (PSK) is a phenotype determined by plasmids using a toxin and an antitoxin gene pair. Loss of the genes depletes the cell's reserve of antitoxin and allows the toxin to act upon the cell. PSK benefits mobile elements when it increases reproductive success relative to other mobile competitors.

Genome Sequences of Beak and Feather Disease Virus in Urban Rainbow Lorikeets (Trichoglossus haematodus).

Beak and feather disease viral genomes were recovered from two deceased juvenile urban rainbow lorikeets (Trichoglossus haematodus) that lacked tail feathers. These genomes share ~95% pairwise identity with two beak and feather disease virus (BFDV) genomes identified in wild and captive Australian T. haematodus birds and ~92% identity to those in wild New Caledonian T.

Sublethal exposure to commercial formulations of the herbicides dicamba, 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, and glyphosate cause changes in antibiotic susceptibility in Escherichia coli and Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium.

Unlabelled: Biocides, such as herbicides, are routinely tested for toxicity but not for sublethal effects on microbes. Many biocides are known to induce an adaptive multiple-antibiotic resistance phenotype. This can be due to either an increase in the expression of efflux pumps, a reduced synthesis of outer membrane porins, or both.

Mapping the distribution of maize streak virus genotypes across the forest and transition zones of Ghana.

Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, maize streak virus strain A (MSV-A), the causal agent of maize streak disease (MSD), is an important biological constraint on maize production. In November/December 2010, an MSD survey was carried out in the forest and transition zones of Ghana in order to obtain MSV-A virulence sources for the development of MSD-resistant maize genotypes with agronomic properties suitable for these regions. In 79 well-distributed maize fields, the mean MSD incidence was 18.

Molecular characterisation of beak and feather disease virus (BFDV) in New Zealand and its implications for managing an infectious disease.

Beak and feather disease virus (BFDV) infections are often fatal to both captive and wild parrot populations. Its recent discovery in a wild population of native red-fronted parakeets has raised concerns for the conservation of native parrots, all of which are threatened or endangered. The question of a recent introduction versus a native genotype of the virus poses different conservation-management challenges, and thus, a clear understanding of the molecular phylogeny of BDFV is a crucial step towards integrated management planning.

Molecular characterisation of an avihepadnavirus isolated from Psittacula krameri (ring-necked parrot).

Avihepadnaviruses have been documented previously in ducks, herons, geese, storks and cranes. Here, we describe the full genome of a new avihepadnavirus isolated from Psittacula krameri (ring-necked parrot) in Poland. The parrot hepatitis B virus (PHBV) genome (3042 bp) shares <76% sequence identity with other avihepadnavirus isolates and is phylogenetically most closely related to heron and stork hepatitis B viruses isolates.

Molecular profiling--a tool for addressing emerging gaps in the comparative risk assessment of GMOs.

Assessing the risks of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is required by both international agreement and domestic legislation. Many view the use of the "omics" tools for profiling classes of molecules as useful in risk assessment, but no consensus has formed on the need or value of these techniques for assessing the risks of all GMOs. In this and many other cases, experts support case-by-case use of molecular profiling techniques for risk assessment.

A new isolate of beak and feather disease virus from endemic wild red-fronted parakeets (Cyanoramphus novaezelandiae) in New Zealand.

Psittacine beak and feather disease (PBFD) is a viral disease distributed worldwide with a potentially critical impact on many rare parrots. While efforts have been made to determine its prevalence in wild and captive psittacines, only limited work has been done to document complete genomes of its causative agent, beak and feather disease virus (BFDV). Here, we describe five full genomes of BFDV isolated from wild specimens of an endemic New Zealand parrot, the red-fronted parakeet (Cyanoramphus novaezelandiae).

Bacterial conjugation-based antimicrobial agents.

A clear imperative exists to generate radically different antibacterial technologies that will reduce the usage of conventional chemical antibiotics. Here we trace one route into this new frontier of drug discovery, a concept that we call the bacterial conjugation-based technologies (BCBT). One of the objectives of the BCBT is to exploit plasmid biology for combating the rising tide of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

The TraA relaxase autoregulates the putative type IV secretion-like system encoded by the broad-host-range Streptococcus agalactiae plasmid pIP501.

The conjugative multiple antibiotic resistance plasmid pIP501 can be transferred and stably maintained in a variety of Gram-positive genera, including multicellular Streptomyces lividans, as well as in Gram-negative Escherichia coli. The 15 putative pIP501 transfer (tra) genes are organized in an operon-like structure terminating in a strong transcriptional terminator. This paper reports co-transcription of the pIP501 tra genes in exponentially growing Enterococcus faecalis JH2-2 cells, as shown by RT-PCR.

Intergeneric transfer of the Enterococcus faecalis plasmid pIP501 to Escherichia coli and Streptomyces lividans and sequence analysis of its tra region.

The nucleotide sequence of the transfer (tra) region of the multiresistance broad-host-range Inc18 plasmid pIP501 was completed. The 8629-bp DNA sequence encodes 10 open reading frames (orf), 9 of them are possibly involved in pIP501 conjugative transfer. The putative pIP501 tra gene products show highest similarity to the respective ORFs of the conjugative Enterococcus faecalis plasmids pRE25 and pAMbeta1, and the Streptococcus pyogenes plasmid pSM19035, respectively.

The tra region of the conjugative plasmid pIP501 is organized in an operon with the first gene encoding the relaxase.

The tra genes orf1 to orf11 of pIP501 were shown to be transcribed as a single operon of 11.3 kb in Enterococcus faecalis by reverse transcription-PCR. The transcriptional start site of the tra mRNA was mapped at 110 bp upstream from the predicted TTG start codon of the first gene of the operon, the traA relaxase.