Outbreak of endophthalmitis traced to a clinic ventilation system.

We describe the follow-up investigation of an outbreak of endophthalmitis due to following cataract surgery in a single clinic. Whole-genome sequence analysis of bacteria recovered from affected patients and the clinic identified the clinic's ventilation system as the source of infection.

Kill and cure: genomic phylogeny and bioactivity of bacteria capable of pathogenic and beneficial lifestyles.

is a bacterium with a broad ecology spanning disease in humans, animals and plants, but also encompassing multiple beneficial interactions. It is a plant pathogen, a toxin-producing food-poisoning agent, and causes lung infections in people with cystic fibrosis (CF). Contrasting beneficial traits include antifungal production exploited by insects to protect their eggs, plant protective abilities and antibiotic biosynthesis.

Enabling technologies for ice giant exploration.

Future missions to an ice giant planet, especially orbital missions, are technologically challenging. But with one exception, radioisotope power sources (RPSs), the technologies that would enable such missions are currently available. RPSs are not a new technology, but devices used in the past that are appropriate to an ice giant mission are no longer available without engineering development work (currently unfunded), and it is uncertain whether the new NASA unit under development will be available for flight in time to take advantage of the best transfer trajectories of the next 15 years.

Comparative Genomics of , a Genus Enriched in Xenobiotic Biodegradation and Metabolism.

Comparative analysis of partial , , and gene sequences of 84 reference strains and field isolates revealed several clusters that included no taxonomic reference strains. The , , and phylogenetic trees were used to select 27 strains for whole-genome sequence analysis and for a comparative genomics study that also included 41 publicly available genome sequences. The phylogenomic analyses included a Genome BLAST Distance Phylogeny approach to calculate pairwise digital DNA-DNA hybridization values and their confidence intervals, average nucleotide identity analyses using the OrthoANIu algorithm, and a whole-genome phylogeny reconstruction based on 107 single-copy core genes using bcgTree.