Plasmid Transfer in the Ocean - A Case Study from the Roseobacter Group.

Plasmid mediated horizontal gene transfer (HGT) has been speculated to be one of the prime mechanisms for the adaptation of roseobacters () to their ecological niches in the marine habitat. Their plasmids contain ecologically crucial functional modules of up to ∼40-kb in size, e.g.

Isolation of -Containing Phagosome from Infected Human Monocyte Derived Macrophages.

is a gram-negative bacterial pathogen, which causes tularemia in humans and animals. A crucial step of infection is its invasion of macrophage cells. Biogenesis of the -containing phagosome (FCP) is arrested for ~15 min at the endosomal stage, followed by gradual bacterial escape into the cytosol, where the microbe proliferates.

SCM, the M Protein of Binds Immunoglobulin G.

The M protein of (SCM) is a virulence factor and serves as a surface-associated receptor with a particular affinity for mini-plasminogen, a cleavage product of the broad-spectrum serine protease plasmin. Here, we report that SCM has an additional high-affinity immunoglobulin G (IgG) binding activity. The ability of a particular isolate to bind to IgG significantly correlates with a -positive phenotype, suggesting a dominant role of SCM as an IgG receptor.

PilY1 Promotes Infection of Human Lung Tissue Explants and Contributes to Bacterial Adhesion, Host Cell Invasion, and Twitching Motility.

Legionnaires' disease is an acute fibrinopurulent pneumonia. During infection adheres to the alveolar lining and replicates intracellularly within recruited macrophages. Here we provide a sequence and domain composition analysis of the PilY1 protein, which has a high homology to PilY1 of .