Induced prophages detected from the hemoculture: a biomarker for infection.

Bacteriophages (phages), viruses that infect bacteria, are found in abundance not only in the environment but also in the human body. The use of phages for the diagnosis of melioidosis, a tropical infectious disease caused by , is emerging as a promising novel approach, but our understanding of conditions under which prophages can be induced remains limited. Here, we first demonstrated the isolation of phages from the hemocultures of melioidosis patients.

Analysis of the role of the QseBC two-component sensory system in epinephrine-induced motility and intracellular replication of Burkholderia pseudomallei.

Burkholderia pseudomallei is a facultative intracellular bacterial pathogen that causes melioidosis, a severe invasive disease of humans. We previously reported that the stress-related catecholamine hormone epinephrine enhances motility of B. pseudomallei, transcription of flagellar genes and the production of flagellin.

Lymphostatin, a virulence factor of attaching and effacing , inhibits proliferation and cytokine responses of human T cells in a manner associated with cell cycle arrest but not apoptosis or necrosis.

Lymphostatin is a virulence factor of enteropathogenic (EPEC) and non-O157 serogroup enterohaemorrhagic . Previous studies using whole-cell lysates of EPEC showed that lymphostatin inhibits the mitogen-activated proliferation of bulk human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and the production of cytokines IL-2, IL-4, IL-5, and IFN-γ. Here, we used highly purified lymphostatin and PBMC-derived T cells to show that lymphostatin inhibits anti-CD3/anti-CD28-activated proliferation of human CD4 and CD8 T cells and blocks the synthesis of IL-2, IL-4, IL-10 and IFN-γ without affecting cell viability and in a manner dependent on an N-terminal DTD glycosyltransferase motif.