The present study was aimed at characterising Biomphalaria species using both morphological and molecular (PCR-RFLP) approaches. The specimens were collected in 15 localities in 12 municipalities of the southern region of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. The following species were found and identified: Biomphalaria tenagophila guaibensis, Biomphalaria oligoza and Biomphalaria peregrina. ...

The presence of enterotoxigenic Bacteroides fragilis and nontoxigenic B. fragilis (NTBF) among 109 strains isolated from 1980-2008 in Brazil were investigated by PCR. One strain, representing 0.9% of the total analyzed strains, harbored the bft gene which was identified as bft-1 isoform based on PCR-RFLP and sequencing. Forty-nine strains (44.9%) exhibited the NTBF pattern III which possesses t...

Ichthyozoonotic Mycobacterium spp. poses health risks both to fish and humans. In this study, the presence of ichthyozoonotic Mycobacterium spp. was investigated in red mullet (Mullus barbatus barbatus) and surmullet (Mullus surmuletus), widely caught species in the Mediterranean and the Aegean Sea. A total of 208 fish samples, provided from fishermen of Mersin province (Turkey) were studied. U...

In order to study the matrilineal genetic composition in Cabo Verde (Republic of Cape Verde), an archipelago that used to serve as a Portuguese entrepôt of the Atlantic slave trade, we have analysed a total of 292 mtDNAs sampled from the seven inhabited islands for the hypervariable segment I (HVS-I) and some characteristic RFLPs of the coding regions. The different settlement history of the no...

Mitochondrial DNA polymorphisms were analyzed in of 1,610 randomly chosen adult men from 11 different regions from southeastern Europe (Croatians, Bosnians and Herzegovinians, Serbians, Macedonians and Macedonian Romani). MtDNA HVS-I region together with RFLP sites diagnostic for main Euroasian and African mtDNA haplogroups were typed to determine haplogroup frequency distribution. The most fre...

Giardia duodenalis is an enteric parasite that has distinct genetic groups. Human infections are mainly caused by assemblages A and B, although sporadic infections by assemblages C and D have also been reported. Animals can be infected by a wide range of assemblages (A to H). The aim of this study is to identify the assemblages and sub-assemblages of G. duodenalis with zoonotic features in feca...

The highly compartmentalized gut of soil-feeding termites is characterized by pronounced axial dynamics in physicochemical conditions and microbial processes. In a companion paper (D. Schmitt-Wagner, M. W. Friedrich, B. Wagner, and A. Brune, Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 69:6007-6017, 2003), we demonstrated that the variety of physicochemical conditions in the different gut compartments of Cubiterm...

Twenty one staphylococcus aureus isolates of bovine mastitic milk origin from herds at different locations were analysed for their coa gene products and RFLP patterns. One of the isolates was coa gene deficient whereas the rest revealed polymorphism in the coa gene. The isolates revealed three different types of coa gene products (600, 680 or 850 bp) and three distinct RFLP patterns were obtain...

Experimental populations of Drosophila simulans were established for the purpose of detecting the presence or absence of selection on a restriction fragment length polymorphism in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). It was then discovered that the founding strains differed with respect to the Rickettsia-mediated incompatibility system in this species, which is maternally transmitted together with the mt...

BACKGROUND So far, studies on the inter-relationship between Malassezia and Malassezia folliculitis have been rather scarce. OBJECTIVE We sought to analyze the differences in body sites, gender and age groups, and to determine whether there is a relationship between certain types of Malassezia species and Malassezia folliculitis. METHODS Specimens were taken from the forehead, cheek and che...