Behavioral characteristics and endosymbionts of two potential tularemia and Rocky Mountain spotted fever tick vectors.

Due to climate change-induced alterations of temperature and humidity, the distribution of pathogen-carrying organisms such as ticks may shift. Tick survival is often limited by environmental factors such as dryness, but a predicted hotter and wetter world may allow the expansion of tick ranges. Dermacentor andersoni and D.

Whole-genome sequencing in the investigation of recurrent invasive group A streptococcus outbreaks in a maternity unit.

Background: The clinical manifestations of group A streptococcus (GAS) (Streptococcus pyogenes) are diverse, ranging from asymptomatic colonization to devastating invasive disease. Maternity-related clusters of invasive GAS (iGAS) infection are complex to investigate and control, especially if recurrent.

Aim: To investigate three episodes of emm 75 GAS/iGAS infection in maternity patients at one hospital site over a four-year period (two with monophyletic ancestry).

Random meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus carrier surveillance at a district hospital and the impact of interventions to reduce endemic carriage.

Colonisation with meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has previously been described as a risk factor for subsequent infection. MRSA colonisation reached endemic proportions in most healthcare institutions in the UK during the 1990s. Bacteraemia due to MRSA is associated with increased mortality and morbidity compared with meticillin-susceptible S.

Effect of ethanesulfonic acid buffers and pH on the accumulation of a nervous system-specific protein (S-100) and a glial-enriched enzyme in a clonal line of rat astrocytes (C6).

Stationary phase cultures of a clonal line of rat astrocytes (C6) were maintained at pH values ranging from 6.0 to 8.4 using media buffered with various combinations of organic buffers or graded concentrations of bicarbonate ion at a constant CO2 tension.

Some paradoxical effects of inhibitors of protein synthesis on protein turnover in cultured human cells.

Low concentrations of cycloheximide, sufficient to block net protein synthesis in growing normal and cancer cells, had no effect on protein turnover, i.e. either the incorporation of labeled amino acids from media lacking other amino acids essential for growth, or the loss to the medium of amino acids from prelabeled cells.

Effect of environmental pH on rescue of Simian virus 40.

Rescue of SV40 virus after Sendai virus-mediated fusion of transformed mouse or hamster cell lines with permissive monkey cells was strikingly dependent on pH in the range 6.4-8.8, with a maximum at pH 8.

Effect of environmental pH on the efficiency of cellular hybridization.

The hybridization of a human and mouse cell was strikingly pH-dependent, with a well defined optimum at (about) pH 7.6-8.0.

Buffer combinations for mammalian cell culture.

The growth and metabolism of cultured mammalian cells are markedly affected by the pH variation in ordinary hicarbonate-buffered media (pH 8.0 to 6.9).

pH as a determinant of cellular growth and contact inhibition.

1) Both the growth rate and the maximum population density of several normal, virus-transformed, and cancer cells were markedly pH-dependent; the optimum varied from pH 6.9 to 7.8.

Morphologic changes accompanying senescence of cultured human diploid cells.

The lysosomes of serially propagated human fibroblasts gradually transform to residual bodies which increase in number and size, and show progressive degenerative changes. There is an accompanying, and less regular, decrease in the number of cytoplasmic polyribosomes and an increased number of glycogen particles. The onset of these morphologic alterations occurs shortly after culture initiation and precedes any marked decrease in the rate of cellular growth; however, in their extreme form these changes may be related to the ultimate cessation of cellular multiplication ("senescence").

Growth characteristics of virus-transformed cells. Maximum population density, inhibition by normal cells, serum requirement, growth in soft agar, and xenogeneic transplantability.

Virus transformants (like cancer cells, cells transformed by X-ray or carcinogens, or those which have transformed spontaneously) exhibit a number of phenotypic changes which are usually associated, and which may be lost concurrently. That association is, however, not invariable. More particularly, the altered characteristics here studied (escape from contact inhibition of growth and susceptibility to inhibition by other cells, decreased serum requirement, and ability to grow in soft agar) do not, in and of themselves, endow the cell with the capacity to produce a tumor, at least as judged by the methods of assay here used.

Evidence for intergenic complementation in hybrid cells derived from two human diploid strains each carrying an X-linked mutation.

Two male diploid fibroblast strains, each carrying deficiency mutations at different X-linked loci (glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase and hypoxanthine-guanine-phosphoribosyltransferase) have been successfully hybridized. The resulting mononucleated hybrid cells have been shown to synthesize both normal gene products, indicating that both X chromosomes are functionally active in the hybrid cells. We believe this is the first reported example of intergenic complementation in fused human diploid cells.