Lipoteichoic acid (LTA), a glycerol phosphate polymer, is a component of the envelope of Gram-positive bacteria that has hitherto not been identified in Bacillus anthracis, the causative agent of anthrax. LTA synthesis in Staphylococcus aureus and other microbes is catalyzed by the product of the ltaS gene, a membrane protein that polymerizes polyglycerol phosphate from phosphatidyl glycerol. H...

Quorum-sensing (QS), the regulation of bacterial gene expression in response to changes in cell density, involves pathways that synthesize signaling molecules (auto-inducers). The luxS/AI-2-mediated QS system has been identified in both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. Bacillus anthracis, the etiological agent of anthrax, possesses genes involved in luxS/AI-2-mediated QS, and deletion ...

Effective treatment of anthrax is hampered by our limited understanding of the pathophysiology of Bacillus anthracis infection. We used a genetically complete (pXO1(+) pXO2(+)) virulent B. anthracis strain and four isogenic toxin-null mutants to determine the effects of the anthrax edema toxin (ET; edema factor [EF] plus protective antigen [PA]) and lethal toxin (LT; lethal factor [LF] plus PA)...

Bacillus anthracis is considered to be one of the most potent biological weapons because of its highly pathogenic nature and efficiency of transmission. Routinely, a presumptive diagnosis of anthrax is achieved if the bands with predicted sizes are detected after the PCR targeted to the pag and cap genes residing on pXO1 and pXO2 plasmids, respectively. A positive control DNA prepared from the ...

(1) Background: Bacillus cereus biovar anthracis (Bcbva) was the causative agent of an anthrax-like fatal disease among wild chimpanzees in 2001 Côte d’Ivoire. Before this, there had not been any description caused by typically avirulent cereus. Genetic analysis found that B. acquired two plasmids, one a pXO1-like toxin producing plasmid and other pXO2-like encoding capsule. Bcbva animal fatali...

Rapid and accurate detection of Bacillus anthracis, the causative agent of anthrax, remains an active area of research due to the continued threat of bioterrorist attack. The ability to differentiate Bacillus anthracis spores from spores belonging to other Bacillus species is important for the development of spore-based detection methods. Furthermore, not all Bacillus anthracis strains are full...

Sporulation initiation in Bacillus species is controlled by an extended version of two-component signal transduction systems, termed phosphorelay (4). The cascade of His3Asp3 His3Asp phosphotransfer is typically initiated by the ATPdependent autophosphorylation of the histidine kinase domain. In this issue, Scaramozzino et al. (11) reported that a sporulation histidine kinase, BA2291, in Bacill...

anthrax, a zoonotic disease caused by bacillus anthracis, has affected humans since ancient times. for genomic characterization of razi b. anthracis sterne 34f2 substrain, single nucleotide polymorphism (snp) genotyping method developed by van erth, variable-number tandem-repeat (vntr)-8 analysis proposed by keim, and multiple-locus vntr analysis (mlva)-3 introduced by levy were employed. in th...