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77 news posts in Frontiers in Microbiology

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01 Apr 2019

More scrutiny needed for less-deadly foodborne bacteria

Foodborne pathogens in the Bacillus cereus group cause diarrhea and vomiting. Credit: Penn State. — by Penn State University, USA Employing advanced genetic-tracing techniques and sharing the data produced in real time could limit the spread of bacteria — Bacillus cereus — which cause foodborne illness, according to researchers who implemented whole-genome sequencing of a pathogen-outbreak investigation. “Here, in our study, we use this approach for the first time on Bacillus cereus,” said Jasna Kovac, assistant professor of food science, Penn State. “It is our hope that whole-genome sequencing of Bacillus will be done more often as a result of our research, as it allows us to differentiate between the various species of Bacillus cereus group and project the food-safety risk associated with them.” Characterization of Emetic and Diarrheal Bacillus cereusStrains From a 2016 Foodborne Outbreak Using Whole-Genome Sequencing: Addressing the Microbiological, Epidemiological, and Bioinformatic Challenges► Read original article► Download original article (pdf) Done in response to an outbreak of foodborne illness in upstate New York in 2016, the project marked the first time researchers conducted whole-genome sequencing to investigate a Bacillus cereus outbreak to link isolates from human clinical cases to food. The outbreak, which lasted less than a month, stemmed from contaminated refried beans served by a small Mexican […]

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29 Mar 2019

New drug resistance process found in bacteria

This is the research team in charge of the study. From left to right: Ivan Erill, Pilar Cortés, Jordi Barbé and Miquel Sánchez-Osuna. Credit: UAB. — by Autonomous University of Barcelona A team of researchers has discovered a new process capable of generating resistance to synthetic antibacterial drugs within bacterial populations long before they are put to clinical use. The research was led by Jordi Barbé, researcher at the Molecular Microbiology Group of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), and by Ivan Erill from the Department of Biology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). The findings were recently published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology. Researchers analysed the large volume of bacterial genomes available with the aim of identifying the origin of mobile genetic elements carriers of a resistance to sulfonamides frequently detected in the superbacteria found in hospitals. Origin of the Mobile Di-Hydro-Pteroate Synthase Gene Determining Sulfonamide Resistance in Clinical Isolates► Read original article► Download original article (pdf) Through a comparative analysis of sequences and phylogenetic techniques, the researchers were able to establish that sulfonamide-resistant genes appeared in two ground bacteria families (Rhodobiaceae and Leptospiraceae) over 600 million years ago thanks to a mutation in the drug’s target gene. The […]