Age-Specific Association of CCL5 Gene Polymorphism with Pulmonary Tuberculosis: A Case-Control Study.

Objectives: Chemokines play a key role in immune regulation and response, and have been implicated in the pathogenesis of tuberculosis (TB). In this study, we investigated whether functional polymorphisms of the chemokines CCL5, CCL2, and CXCL8 are associated with pulmonary TB in a Moldavian population.

Materials And Methods: A total of 250 patients with TB and 184 healthy controls were screened for CCL5 -403G/A (rs2107538), CCL5 In1.

Molecular Detection and Serological Evidence of Tick-Borne Encephalitis Virus in Serbia.

Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) is a zoonotic flaviviral infection that is a growing public health concern in European countries. The aims of this research were to detect and characterize tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV) in Ixodes ricinus ticks at presumed natural foci in Serbia, and to determine seroprevalence of TBEV IgG antibodies in humans and animals. A total of 500 I.

Dynamics of a vertical-flow windrow vermicomposting system.

Large-scale vermicomposting under outdoor conditions may differ from small-scale procedures in the laboratory. The present study evaluated changes in selected properties of a large-scale vertical-flow windrow vermicomposting system with continuous feeding with household biowaste. The windrow profile was divided into five layers of differing thickness and age after more than 12 months of vermicomposting.

The ambrosia symbiosis is specific in some species and promiscuous in others: evidence from community pyrosequencing.

Symbioses are increasingly seen as dynamic ecosystems with multiple associates and varying fidelity. Symbiont specificity remains elusive in one of the most ecologically successful and economically damaging eukaryotic symbioses: the ambrosia symbiosis of wood-boring beetles and fungi. We used multiplexed pyrosequencing of amplified internal transcribed spacer II (ITS2) ribosomal DNA (rDNA) libraries to document the communities of fungal associates and symbionts inside the mycangia (fungus transfer organ) of three ambrosia beetle species, Xyleborus affinis, Xyleborus ferrugineus and Xylosandrus crassiusculus.