Impact of intense sanitization procedures on bacterial communities recovered from floor drains in pork processing plants.

Background: Pork processing plants in the United States (US) cease operations for 24-48 h every six or twelve months to perform intense sanitization (IS) using fogging, foaming, and further antimicrobial treatments to disrupt natural biofilms that may harbor pathogens and spoilage organisms. The impact such treatments have on short-term changes in environmental microorganisms is not well understood, nor is the rate at which bacterial communities return.

Methods: Swab samples were collected from floor drains to provide representative environmental microorganisms at two US pork processing plants before, during, and after an IS procedure.

Shotgun-metagenomics reveals a highly diverse and communal microbial network present in the drains of three beef-processing plants.

Background: Multi-species biofilms pose a problem in various environments, especially food-processing environments. The diversity of microorganisms in these biofilms plays a critical role in their integrity and protection against external biotic and abiotic factors. Compared to single-species biofilms, mixed-species biofilms are more resistant to various stresses, including antimicrobials like sanitizers.

BH3 mimetic ABT-737 sensitizes colorectal cancer cells to ixazomib through MCL-1 downregulation and autophagy inhibition.

The proteasome inhibitor MLN9708 is an orally administered drug that is hydrolyzed into its active form, MLN2238 (ixazomib). Compared with Bortezomib, MLN2238 has a shorter proteasome dissociation half-life and a lower incidence and severity of peripheral neuropathy, which makes it an attractive candidate for colorectal cancer treatment. In the present study, we observed that MLN2238 induced autophagy, as evidenced by conversion of the autophagosomal marker LC3 from LC3I to LC3II, in colorectal cancer cell lines.

T-bet Is Required for the Rapid Clearance of Attenuated Rabies Virus from Central Nervous System Tissue.

Much of our understanding of CNS immunity has been gained from models involving pathological inflammation. Attenuated rabies viruses (RABV) are unique tools to study CNS immunity in the absence of conventional inflammatory mechanisms, as they spread from the site of inoculation to the CNS transaxonally, thereby bypassing the blood-brain barrier (BBB), and are cleared without neutrophil or monocyte infiltration. To better understand the role of CD4 T cell subsets in the clearance of the virus from CNS tissues, we examined the development of antiviral immunity in wild-type (WT) and T-bet knockout mice (T-bet(-/-)), which lack Th1 cells.

Pre- and post-exposure safety and efficacy of attenuated rabies virus vaccines are enhanced by their expression of IFNγ.

Consistent with evidence of a strong correlation between interferon gamma (IFNγ) production and rabies virus (RABV) clearance from the CNS, we recently demonstrated that engineering a pathogenic RABV to express IFNγ highly attenuates the virus. Reasoning that IFNγ expression by RABV vaccines would enhance their safety and efficacy, we reverse-engineered two proven vaccine vectors, GAS and GASGAS, to express murine IFNγ. Mortality and morbidity were monitored during suckling mice infection, immunize/challenge experiments and mixed intracranial infections.