Publications by authors named "Kara Waits"

The Gila monster (Heloderma suspectum) is native to the Sonoran Desert. Metagenomic analyses of a Gila monster fecal sample revealed the presence of a small, circular, single-stranded DNA virus that is most closely related to a gemykrogvirus (family Genomoviridae) genome from caribou feces sharing 88% genome-wide pairwise identity.

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Ashy storm-petrels (order Procellariiformes) are seabirds that are found along the coast of California to Baja Mexico. A novel gyrovirus was identified from a cloacal swab of an ashy storm-petrel, which is the second gyrovirus to be identified in sea birds, the first being found in the related northern fulmar.

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Background: We sought to determine if the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant Escherichia coli differed across retail poultry products and among major production categories, including organic, "raised without antibiotics", and conventional.

Results: We collected all available brands of retail chicken and turkey-including conventional, "raised without antibiotic", and organic products-every two weeks from January to December 2012. In total, E.

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sequence type 131 (ST131) has emerged rapidly to become the most prevalent extraintestinal pathogenic clones in circulation today. Previous investigations appeared to exonerate retail meat as a source of human exposure to ST131; however, these studies focused mainly on extensively multidrug-resistant ST131 strains, which typically carry allele 30 of the type 1 fimbrial adhesin gene (ST131-30). To estimate the frequency of extraintestinal human infections arising from foodborne ST131 strains without bias toward particular sublineages or phenotypes, we conducted a 1-year prospective study of from meat products and clinical cultures in Flagstaff, Arizona.

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The San Juan Mountains of southern Colorado provide subalpine habitat for a suite of mammalian species including Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis), moose (Alces alces) and snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus). In the winter field season of 2016 five faecal samples from lynx, and one each from moose and snowshoe hare were collected to identify small single-stranded DNA viruses associated with these three prominent species. Thirty-two novel viruses were identified and classified as members of two well established ssDNA families Genomoviridae (n = 22) and Microviridae (n = 10) and one recently proposed new family, Smacoviridae (n = 1).

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is a ubiquitous and parasitic mite of honey bees, infecting them with pathogenic viruses having a major impact on apiculture. We identified two novel circular replication-associated protein (Rep)-encoding single-stranded (CRESS) DNA viruses from sampled from a honey bee hive near Christchurch in New Zealand.

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Papillomaviridae is a diverse family of circular, double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) viruses that infect a broad range of mammalian, avian and fish hosts. While papillomaviruses have been characterized most extensively in humans, the study of non-human papillomaviruses has contributed greatly to our understanding of their pathogenicity and evolution. Using high-throughput sequencing approaches, we identified 7 novel papillomaviruses from vaginal swabs collected from 81 adult female Weddell seals (Leptonychotes weddellii) in the Ross Sea of Antarctica between 2014-2017.

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Ticks are blood-feeding arachnids that are vectors of several important human and animal pathogens. Little is known about single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) viruses that are associated with these ectoparasites. As part of a pilot study to identify ssDNA viruses present in ticks, female American dog ticks (Dermacentor variabilis) and blacklegged ticks (Ixodes scapularis) were collected in eastern Pennsylvania (USA), and the extracted viral DNA was analyzed using viral metagenomics approaches.

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Background: Klebsiella pneumoniae is a common colonizer of the gastrointestinal tract of humans, companion animals, and livestock. To better understand potential contributions of foodborne K. pneumoniae to human clinical infections, we compared K.

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Retail poultry products are known sources of antibiotic-resistant Escherichia coli, a major human health concern. Consumers have a range of choices for poultry, including conventional, organic, kosher, and raised without antibiotics (RWA) - designations that are perceived to indicate differences in quality and safety. However, whether these categories vary in the frequency of contamination with antibiotic-resistant E.

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