Publications by authors named "Umanets Alexander"

Background: Safety of probiotic strains that are used in human and animal trials is a prerequisite. Genome based safety assessment of probiotics has gained popularity due its cost efficiency and speed, and even became a part of national regulation on foods containing probiotics in Indonesia. However, reliability of the safety assessment based only on a full genome sequence is not clear.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Children learn to accept novel foods by repeated exposure to these foods. In the current study, we investigated in toddlers whether a contingency management program (The Vegetable Box), comprising repeated vegetable taste exposure with contingent non-food rewards, is particularly potent at increasing recognition of and willingness to try vegetables. A total of 598 children (1-4 years old) recruited at 26 different day-care centres in the Netherlands took part.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • A study was conducted to screen for CoVs in the insectivorous bat population of the Fore-Caucasus, yielding a lower detection rate of 3.33% based on qPCR results, indicating potential regional variability in prevalence.
  • While BetaCoVs were found in the metagenomic NGS data, a deeper investigation is needed due to low RNA concentrations that hinder detailed characterization, suggesting future research should focus on enhanced metagenomic analysis for better insights.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Bovine paratuberculosis is a devastating infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis (MAP). The development of the paratuberculosis in cattle can take up to a few years and vastly differs between individuals in severity of the clinical symptoms and shedding of the pathogen.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - Chlamydia gallinacea is a newly identified bacterium in the Chlamydiaceae family, commonly found in poultry, and may cause pneumonia in slaughterhouse workers, though infections typically appear asymptomatic in birds.
  • - Researchers isolated two closely related strains (NL_G47 and NL_F725) from healthy chickens, showing high similarity to the C. gallinacea Type strain, and conducted experiments to assess their pathogenic potential.
  • - Infection experiments in chicken embryos demonstrated lower mortality rates with C. gallinacea compared to a more harmful related bacterium, C. psittaci, but the presence of virulence factors suggests that C. gallinacea could be an opportunistic pathogen rather than harmless.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Chloroform (CF) is an environmental contaminant that can be naturally formed in various environments ranging from forest soils to salt lakes. Here we investigated CF removal potential in sediments obtained from hypersaline lakes in Western Australia. Reductive dechlorination of CF to dichloromethane (DCM) was observed in enrichment cultures derived from sediments of Lake Strawbridge, which has been reported as a natural source of CF.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Present study was performed to describe the morphological and molecular characterization of Toxocara tanuki (Nematoda: Ascaridae) from Korean raccoon dog, Nyctereutes procyonoides koreensis, naturally infected in the Republic of Korea (Korea). Juvenile and adult worms of T. tanuki were recovered in 5 out of 10 raccoon dogs examined and the larval worms were detected in 15 out of 20 muscle samples (75%).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Anthropophilic mosquitoes are effective vectors of human disease because of their biting preferences. To find their host, these mosquitoes are guided by human odours, primarily produced by human skin bacteria. By analysing the skin bacterial and skin volatile profiles of humans, bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas, lemurs and cows, we investigated whether primates that are more closely related to humans have a skin bacterial community and odour profile that is similar to that of humans.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A Gram-stain-positive, motile, rod-shaped, obligately anaerobic bacterium, designated FRIFI, was isolated from human ileostoma effluent and characterized. On the basis of 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity, strain FRIFI was most closely related to the species Romboutsia ilealis CRIB (97.7 %), Romboutsia lituseburensis DSM 797 (97.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The microbiota of the mammalian gut is a complex ecosystem, the composition of which is greatly influenced by host genetics and environmental factors. In this study, we aim to investigate the influence of occupancy (a geographical area of habitation), species, age and sex on intestinal microbiota composition of the three lemur species: Eulemur fulvus, E. rubriventer and E.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF