From hunter-gatherers to food producers: New dental insights into the Nile Valley population history (Late Paleolithic-Neolithic).

Objectives: This study presents biological affinities between the last hunter-fisher-gatherers and first food-producing societies from the Nile Valley. We investigate odontometric and dental tissue proportion changes between these populations from the Middle Nile Valley and acknowledge the biological processes behind them.

Materials And Methods: Dental remains of 329 individuals from Nubia and Central Sudan that date from the Late Pleistocene to the mid-Holocene are studied.

Variation in the plasmid backbone and dif module content of R3-T33 Acinetobacter plasmids.

The predominant type of plasmids found in Acinetobacter species encode a Rep_3 initiation protein and many of these carry their accessory genes in dif modules. Here, available sequences of the 14 members of the group of Rep_3 plasmids typed as R3-T33, using a threshold of 95% identity in the repA gene, were compiled and compared. These plasmids were from various Acinetobacter species.

The K70 and K9 capsular polysaccharides consist of related K-units linked by the same Wzy polymerase and cleaved by the same phage depolymerases.

Bacteriophage show promise for the treatment of infections that resist all therapeutically suitable antibiotics. Many tail-spike depolymerases encoded by phage that are able to degrade capsular polysaccharide (CPS) exhibit specificity for the linkage present between K-units that make up CPS polymers. This linkage is formed by a specific Wzy polymerase, and the ability to predict this linkage using sequence-based methods that identify the Wzy at the K locus could assist with the selection of phage for therapy.

The extensively antibiotic resistant ST111 Acinetobacter baumannii isolate RBH2 carries an extensive mobile element complement of plasmids, transposons and insertion sequences.

The complete genome of RBH2, a sporadic, carbapenem resistant ST111 Acinetobacter baumannii isolate from Brisbane, Australia was determined and analysed. RBH2 is extensively resistant and the chromosome includes two transposons carrying antibiotic resistance genes, AbaR4 (oxa23 in Tn2006) and Tn7::Tn2006 (dfrA1, sat2, aadA1, oxa23). The chromosome also includes two copies of Tn6175, a transposon carrying putative copper resistance genes, and 1-17 copies of six different insertion sequences.