The roles, challenges, and merits of the p value.

Since the 18th century, the p value has been an important part of hypothesis-based scientific investigation. As statistical and data science engines accelerate, questions emerge: to what extent are scientific discoveries based on p values reliable and reproducible? Should one adjust the significance level or find alternatives for the p value? Inspired by these questions and everlasting attempts to address them, here, we provide a systematic examination of the p value from its roles and merits to its misuses and misinterpretations. For the latter, we summarize modest recommendations to handle them.

Bacterial natural products in the fight against mosquito-transmitted tropical diseases.

Covering: up to 2019 Secondary metabolites of microbial origin have long been acknowledged as medically relevant, but their full potential remains largely unexploited. Of the countless natural compounds discovered thus far, only 5-10% have been isolated from microorganisms. At the same time, while whole-genome sequencing has demonstrated that bacteria and fungi often encode natural products, only a few genera have yet been mined for new compounds.

Aminopeptidase secreted by Chromobacterium sp. Panama inhibits dengue virus infection by degrading the E protein.

Dengue virus (DENV) is the most prevalent and burdensome arbovirus transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes, against which there is only a limited licensed vaccine and no approved drug treatment. A Chromobacterium species, C. sp.

Chromobacterium spp. mediate their anti-Plasmodium activity through secretion of the histone deacetylase inhibitor romidepsin.

The Chromobacterium sp. Panama bacterium has in vivo and in vitro anti-Plasmodium properties. To assess the nature of the Chromobacterium-produced anti-Plasmodium factors, chemical partition was conducted by bioassay-guided fractionation where different fractions were assayed for activity against asexual stages of P.

Functional genomic analyses of Enterobacter, Anopheles and Plasmodium reciprocal interactions that impact vector competence.

Background: Malaria exerts a tremendous socioeconomic impact worldwide despite current control efforts, and novel disease transmission-blocking strategies are urgently needed. The Enterobacter bacterium Esp_Z, which is naturally harboured in the mosquito midgut, can inhibit the development of Plasmodium parasites prior to their invasion of the midgut epithelium through a mechanism that involves oxidative stress. Here, a multifaceted approach is used to study the tripartite interactions between the mosquito, Esp_Z and Plasmodium, towards addressing the feasibility of using sugar-baited exposure of mosquitoes to the Esp_Z bacterium for interruption of malaria transmission.

Mosquito gut antiparasitic and antiviral immunity.

Mosquitoes are responsible for the transmission of diseases with a serious impact on global human health, such as malaria and dengue. All mosquito-transmitted pathogens complete part of their life cycle in the insect gut, where they are exposed to mosquito-encoded barriers and active factors that can limit their development. Here we present the current understanding of mosquito gut immunity against malaria parasites, filarial worms, and viruses such as dengue, Chikungunya, and West Nile.

Chromobacterium Csp_P reduces malaria and dengue infection in vector mosquitoes and has entomopathogenic and in vitro anti-pathogen activities.

Plasmodium and dengue virus, the causative agents of the two most devastating vector-borne diseases, malaria and dengue, are transmitted by the two most important mosquito vectors, Anopheles gambiae and Aedes aegypti, respectively. Insect-bacteria associations have been shown to influence vector competence for human pathogens through multi-faceted actions that include the elicitation of the insect immune system, pathogen sequestration by microbes, and bacteria-produced anti-pathogenic factors. These influences make the mosquito microbiota highly interesting from a disease control perspective.

Fluoroquinolone-metal complexes: a route to counteract bacterial resistance?

Microbial resistance to antibiotics is one of the biggest public health threats of the modern world. Antibiotic resistance is an area of much clinical relevance and therefore research that has the potential to identify agents that may circumvent it or treat resistant infections is paramount. Solution behavior of various fluoroquinolone (FQ) complexes with copper(II) in the presence and absence of 1,10-phenanthroline (phen) was studied in aqueous solution, by potentiometry and/or spectrophotometry, and are herein described.

Discrimination of single-porin Escherichia (E.) coli mutants by ATR and transmission mode FTIR spectroscopy.

Vibrational spectroscopy has long been used in bacterial identification with different levels of taxonomic discrimination but its true potential for intra-species differentiation remains poorly explored. Herein, both transmission Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) and attenuated total reflectance (ATR)-FTIR spectroscopy are used to analyse E. coli strains that differ solely in their porin expression profile.