The rice seedling blight fungus Rhizopus microsporus and its endosymbiont Burkholderia rhizoxinica form an unusual, highly specific alliance to produce the highly potent antimitotic phytotoxin rhizoxin. Yet, it has remained a riddle how bacteria invade the fungal cells. Genome mining for potential symbiosis factors and functional analyses revealed that a type 2 secretion system (T2SS) of the ba...

In order to develop antimicrobial mixtures which provide broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity for use with cultured cell autografts, several individual antimicrobial agents, in concentrations non-toxic for cells in culture, were tested against a variety of bacteria and Candida spp. isolated from burn patients. An agar well diffusion topical assay was used. Antimicrobials active against Gram-po...

Metronidazole is one of the rare examples of a drug developed against a parasite which has since gained broad use as an antibacterial agent (24). Briefly, at Rhone-Poulenc labs in France, extracts of Streptomyces spp. were screened for activity against Trichomonas vaginalis, a cause of vaginal itching. Azomycin, a nitroimidazole, was identified, and metronidazole, a synthetic derivative, was us...

We set up a macroscopic model of bacterial growth and transport based on a dynamic preferred direction-the collective velocity of the bacteria. This collective velocity is subject to the isotropic-nematic transition modeling the density-controlled transformation between immotile and motile bacterial states. The choice of the dynamic preferred direction introduces a distinctive coupling of orien...

A general strategy for the expression of bacterial membrane transport and receptor genes in Escherichia coli is described. Expression is amplified so that the encoded proteins comprise 5-35% of E. coli inner membrane protein. Depending upon their topology, proteins are produced with RGSH6 or a Strep tag at the C-terminus. These enable purification in mg quantities for crystallization and NMR st...

Article history: Bacterial biofilm formation Received 12 July 2008 Received in revised form 10 October 2008 Accepted 6 December 2008 Available online 24 December 2008

Oxygen and sulfide in ocean sediments can be consumed biologically over long spatial distances by way of filamentous bacteria in electron-conducting sheaths. To analyse observations, a mathematical model of these filamentous sulfur-oxidising bacteria was developed, including electrical conduction between reactive zones. Mechanisms include Nernst-Planck diffusion and migration of ions coupled wi...

We investigate experimentally the emergence of collective motion in the bulk of an active suspension of Escherichia coli bacteria. When increasing the concentration from a dilute to a semi-dilute regime, we observe a continuous crossover from a dynamical cluster regime to a regime of ‘bio-turbulence’ convection patterns. We measure a length scale characterizing the collective motion as a functi...