Bordetella pseudohinzii as a Confounding Organism in Murine Models of Pulmonary Disease.

A group studying acute lung injury observed an increased percentage of neutrophils in the bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid of mice. BAL was performed, and lung samples were collected sterilely from 5 C57BL/6 mice that had been bred inhouse. Pure colonies of bacteria, initially identified as Bordetella hinzii were cultured from 2 of the 5 mice which had the highest percentages of neutrophils (21% and 26%) in the BAL fluid.

Evaluation of Presurgical Skin Preparation Agents in African Clawed Frogs (Xenopus laevis).

Despite the routine collection of oocytes from African clawed frogs (Xenopus laevis) for use in research, few studies have evaluated methods for preparing their skin for surgery. We evaluated 3 skin preparatory agents by examining their antibacterial efficacy and the gross and microscopic appearance of Xenopus skin after exposure. Frogs (n = 14) were sedated and treated (contact time, 10 min) with 0.

Development of a microsphere-based serologic multiplexed fluorescent immunoassay and a reverse transcriptase PCR assay to detect murine norovirus 1 infection in mice.

Murine norovirus 1 (MNV-1) is a newly recognized pathogen of mice that causes lethal infection in mice deficient in components of the innate immune response but not in wild-type 129 mice. In this study, in vitro-propagated MNV-1 was used as antigen to develop a multiplexed fluorescent immunoassay (MFI) to detect antibodies to MNV-1 in infected mice. The MNV-1 MFI was 100% specific and 100% sensitive in detecting anti-MNV-1 antibody in sera from experimentally infected mice.

Serodiagnosis of mice minute virus and mouse parvovirus infections in mice by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay with baculovirus-expressed recombinant VP2 proteins.

Mice minute virus (MMV) and mouse parvovirus (MPV) type 1 are the two parvoviruses known to naturally infect laboratory mice and are among the most prevalent infectious agents found in contemporary laboratory mouse colonies. Serologic assays are commonly used to diagnose MMV and MPV infections in laboratory mice; however, highly accurate, high-throughput serologic assays for the detection of MMV- and MPV-infected mice are needed. To this end, the major capsid viral protein (VP2) genes of MMV and MPV were cloned and MMV recombinant VP2 (rVP2) and MPV rVP2 proteins were expressed by using a baculovirus system.