Cyt Proteins as Enablers of Activity of Cry and Tpp Toxins against .

is a species of mosquito, originally from Southeast Asia, that belongs to the Culicidae family and the Dipteran insect order. The distribution of this vector has rapidly changed over the past decade, making most of the temperate territories in the world vulnerable to important human vector-borne diseases such as dengue, yellow fever, zika or chikungunya. var.

Multifunctional Properties of a Strain (BST-122): Beyond the Parasporal Crystal.

Chemical products still represent the most common form of controlling crop pests and diseases. However, their extensive use has led to the selection of resistances. This makes the finding of new solutions paramount to countering the economic losses that pests and diseases represent in modern agriculture.

Regulation of Heterogenous LexA Expression in by an Antisense RNA Originating from Transcriptional Read-Through upon Natural Mispairings in the Intrinsic Terminator.

Bacterial genomes are pervasively transcribed, generating a wide variety of antisense RNAs (asRNAs). Many of them originate from transcriptional read-through events (TREs) during the transcription termination process. Previous transcriptome analyses revealed that the gene from , which encodes the main SOS response regulator, is affected by the presence of an asRNA.

The Role of ArlRS and VraSR in Regulating Ceftaroline Hypersusceptibility in Methicillin-Resistant .

Methicillin-resistant infections are a global health problem. New control strategies, including fifth-generation cephalosporins such as ceftaroline, have been developed, however rare sporadic resistance has been reported. Our study aimed to determine whether disruption of two-component environmental signal systems detectably led to enhanced susceptibility to ceftaroline in CA-MRSA strain MW2 at sub-MIC concentrations where cells normally continue to grow.

Potential for and Other Bacterial Toxins as Biological Control Agents to Combat Dipteran Pests of Medical and Agronomic Importance.

The control of dipteran pests is highly relevant to humans due to their involvement in the transmission of serious diseases including malaria, dengue fever, Chikungunya, yellow fever, zika, and filariasis; as well as their agronomic impact on numerous crops. Many bacteria are able to produce proteins that are active against insect species. These bacteria include , the most widely-studied pesticidal bacterium, which synthesizes proteins that accumulate in crystals with insecticidal properties and which has been widely used in the biological control of insects from different orders, including Lepidoptera, Coleoptera, and Diptera.

Insecticidal Activity of Proteins Against Coleopteran Pests.

is the most successful microbial insecticide agent and its proteins have been studied for many years due to its toxicity against insects mainly belonging to the orders Lepidoptera, Diptera and Coleoptera, which are pests of agro-forestry and medical-veterinary interest. However, studies on the interactions between this bacterium and the insect species classified in the order Coleoptera are more limited when compared to other insect orders. To date, 45 Cry proteins, 2 Cyt proteins, 11 Vip proteins, and 2 Sip proteins have been reported with activity against coleopteran species.

Potential of Cry10Aa and Cyt2Ba, Two Minority δ-endotoxins Produced by ser. , for the Control of Larvae.

ser. (Bti) has been widely used as microbial larvicide for the control of many species of mosquitoes and blackflies. The larvicidal activity of Bti resides in Cry and Cyt δ-endotoxins present in the parasporal crystal of this pathogen.

Unraveling the Composition of Insecticidal Crystal Proteins in Bacillus thuringiensis: a Proteomics Approach.

(Bt) is the most widely used active ingredient for biological insecticides. The composition of δ-endotoxins (Cry and Cyt proteins) in the parasporal crystal determines the toxicity profile of each Bt strain. However, a reliable method for their identification and quantification has not been available, due to the high sequence identity of the genes that encode the δ-endotoxins and the toxins themselves.

A Strain of Containing a Novel Gene that Is Toxic to (Say) (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae).

The genome of the BM311.1 strain was sequenced and assembled in 359 contigs containing a total of 6,390,221 bp. The plasmidic ORF of a putative gene from this strain was identified as a potential novel Cry protein of 1138 amino acid residues with a 98% identity compared to Cry7Aa1 and a predicted molecular mass of 129.

Quantification of dose-mortality responses in adult Diptera: Validation using Ceratitis capitata and Drosophila suzukii responses to spinosad.

Quantitative laboratory bioassay methods are required to evaluate the toxicity of novel insecticidal compounds for pest control and to determine the presence of resistance traits. We used a radioactive tracer based on 32P-ATP to estimate the volume of a droplet ingested by two dipteran pests: Ceratitis capitata (Tephritidae) and Drosophila suzukii (Drosophilidae). Using blue food dye it was possible to distinguish between individuals that ingested the solution from those that did not.

Sensory deprivation in Staphylococcus aureus.

Bacteria use two-component systems (TCSs) to sense and respond to environmental changes. The core genome of the major human pathogen Staphylococcus aureus encodes 16 TCSs, one of which (WalRK) is essential. Here we show that S.

The regulon of the RNA chaperone CspA and its auto-regulation in Staphylococcus aureus.

RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) are essential to fine-tune gene expression. RBPs containing the cold-shock domain are RNA chaperones that have been extensively studied. However, the RNA targets and specific functions for many of them remain elusive.

Impact of the Regulators SigB, Rot, SarA and sarS on the Toxic Shock Tst Promoter and TSST-1 Expression in Staphylococcus aureus.

Staphylococcus aureus is an important pathogen manifesting virulence through diverse disease forms, ranging from acute skin infections to life-threatening bacteremia or systemic toxic shock syndromes. In the latter case, the prototypical superantigen is TSST-1 (Toxic Shock Syndrome Toxin 1), encoded by tst(H), and carried on a mobile genetic element that is not present in all S. aureus strains.

Base pairing interaction between 5'- and 3'-UTRs controls icaR mRNA translation in Staphylococcus aureus.

The presence of regulatory sequences in the 3' untranslated region (3'-UTR) of eukaryotic mRNAs controlling RNA stability and translation efficiency is widely recognized. In contrast, the relevance of 3'-UTRs in bacterial mRNA functionality has been disregarded. Here, we report evidences showing that around one-third of the mapped mRNAs of the major human pathogen Staphylococcus aureus carry 3'-UTRs longer than 100-nt and thus, potential regulatory functions.

Oxidative stress and proinflammatory cytokines contribute to demyelination and axonal damage in a cerebellar culture model of neuroinflammation.

Background: Demyelination and axonal damage are critical processes in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis (MS). Oxidative stress and pro-inflammatory cytokines elicited by inflammation mediates tissue damage.

Methods/principal Findings: To monitor the demyelination and axonal injury associated with microglia activation we employed a model using cerebellar organotypic cultures stimulated with lipopolysaccharide (LPS).

Genome-wide antisense transcription drives mRNA processing in bacteria.

RNA deep sequencing technologies are revealing unexpected levels of complexity in bacterial transcriptomes with the discovery of abundant noncoding RNAs, antisense RNAs, long 5' and 3' untranslated regions, and alternative operon structures. Here, by applying deep RNA sequencing to both the long and short RNA fractions (<50 nucleotides) obtained from the major human pathogen Staphylococcus aureus, we have detected a collection of short RNAs that is generated genome-wide through the digestion of overlapping sense/antisense transcripts by RNase III endoribonuclease. At least 75% of sense RNAs from annotated genes are subject to this mechanism of antisense processing.

Psychiatric diagnoses in a sample of HIV-infected people of color in methadone treatment.

Little diagnostic information is available for those who represent a significant part of the HIV epidemic: substance-using members of racial and ethnic minority communities. Our paper describes the rates of psychiatric diagnoses in a convenience sample of HIV-positive, African American and Hispanic clients in methadone treatment in the Bronx, NY. Out of 139 HIV-positive volunteers, 99 subjects had diagnoses in addition to opioid dependence on agonist therapy.