Toxigenic strains of Bacillus licheniformis related to food poisoning.

Toxin-producing isolates of Bacillus licheniformis were obtained from foods involved in food poisoning incidents, from raw milk, and from industrially produced baby food. The toxin detection method, based on the inhibition of boar spermatozoan motility, has been shown previously to be a sensitive assay for the emetic toxin of Bacillus cereus, cereulide. Cell extracts of the toxigenic B.

A new rapidly growing mycobacterial species, Mycobacterium murale sp. nov., isolated from the indoor walls of a children's day care centre.

Scotochromogenic mycobacterial isolates from water-damaged parts of indoor building materials of a children's day care centre represented a phenetically and genetically distinct group of strains. A 16S rDNA dendrogram (1243 bp) showed that the closest species to the new strain MA112/96T was Mycobacterium abscessus. Phylogenetic and phenetic analyses (100 characteristics) grouped the new isolates with M.

The lipid A biosynthesis deficiency of the Escherichia coli antibiotic-supersensitive mutant LH530 is suppressed by a novel locus, ORF195.

A new mutant of Escherichia coli K-12 supersensitive to both hydrophobic and large hydrophilic antibiotics was isolated and characterized. The mutant grew well at 28 degrees C, poorly at 37 degrees C, and did not grow at 42 degrees C. The rate of its lipid A biosynthesis was reduced as compared to that of the parent strain.

Comparison of the phenotypes of the lpxA and lpxD mutants of Escherichia coli.

We compared the phenotype of two thermosensitive Escherichia coli mutants defective in lipid A biosynthesis, i.e. SM101 (lpxA) and CDH23-213 (lpxD).

The novel hexapeptide motif found in the acyltransferases LpxA and LpxD of lipid A biosynthesis is conserved in various bacteria.

Two bacterial acyltransferases (LpxA of Escherichia coli, LpxD of E. coli and Salmonella typhimurium) have previously been shown to consist of a very unusual tandem-repeat structure with tens of repeating hexapeptides (24 hexapeptides in LpxA, 26 in LpxD). By sequencing LpxD of Yersinia enterocolitica (a distant relative of E.