The study was aimed at determining the cause of the diseases in three horses exhibiting symptoms of fever, ataxia, mucus membrane paleness, haematuria and thrombocytopenia. The PCR technique revealed the presence in the blood of 18S RNA Babesia/Theileria spp. genetic material. DNA amplification using primers RLB F2 and RLB R2 produced 430 bp size products. The sequences of these PCR products de...

Reverse transcription-PCR and Northern and Western blot analyses indicate that mRNA and protein encoded by the Brachyury gene are expressed by the pluripotent human embryonal carcinoma cell line NTERA2 and are only modestly down-regulated during retinoic acid-induced differentiation. This differentiation occurs along a neural lineage, with no obvious evidence of the formation of mesodermal deri...

In recent years, there have been increasing numbers of infectious disease outbreaks that spread rapidly to population centers resulting from global travel, population vulnerabilities, environmental factors, and ecological disasters such as floods and earthquakes. Some examples of the recent outbreaks are the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-Co) i...

Ticks (n = 663) and fleas (n = 470) collected from domestic animals from southeastern Tunisia were screened for Rickettsia infection using reverse line blot assay. Evidence of spotted fever group Rickettsia was obtained. We detected Rickettsia felis in fleas, Rickettsia massiliae Bar 29 and the Rickettsia conorii Israeli spotted fever strain in ticks, and Rickettsia conorii subsp. conorii and R...

"Norwalk-like viruses" (NLVs) are the most common cause of outbreaks of nonbacterial gastroenteritis worldwide. To date, the method most widely used for typing of NLV strains is sequencing and subsequent phylogenetic analysis of reverse transcription (RT)-PCR products, which has revealed the existence of stable distinct lineages (genotypes). This typing method is rather costly, not routinely us...