Rickettsia felis is a human pathogen transmitted by the cat flea, Ctenocephalides felis (Bouché) (str. LSU), as well as an obligate symbiont of the parthenogenic booklouse Liposcelis bostrychophila (Badonnel) (str. LSU-Lb). The influence of genetic variability in these two strains of R. felis on host specialization and fitness and possible resulting differences on infection and transmission kin...

Septic transfusion reactions (STRs) resulting from transfusion of bacterially contaminated platelets are a major hazard of platelet transfusion despite recent interventions. Active and passive surveillance for bacterially contaminated platelets was performed over 7 years (2007-2013) by culture of platelet aliquots at time of transfusion and review of reported transfusion reactions. All platelet...

Corneal electroretinograms (ERGs) were recorded from anesthetized cats under scotopic conditions. We examined whether the scotopic threshold response (STR) of the ERG could be functionally distinguished from scotopic PII and a-wave using intravitreal application of neuroactive agents. We found that neurotransmitters with active sites on third order neurons had several different effects. Results...

Y-STR analysis may in certain cases complement the autosomal STR markers in forensic, investigations, kinship testing and human identification. Hence, it would be informative to assess the probability of occurrence of the Y-STR haplotype in the Lebanese population where. This study aimed at estimating the Lebanese Y-STR allele and haplotype frequencies in 502 non-related males using the Y-filer...

Polydipsic mice, STR/N, which show extreme polydipsia and polyuria, were discovered in 1958. In the STR/N, urine outputs are much higher than in control mice. The possibility of an abnormal regulation of the arginine vasopressin (AVP) system, or an abnormality in the renal susceptibility to AVP, should be considered. In this study we investigated the AVP system and water regulation in STR/N. We...

We analyzed the genetic polymorphisms of 15 autosomal and 10 Y-chromosomal STR loci in 214 individuals of Han population from Southern Shaanxi of China and studied the genetic relationships between Southern Shaanxi Han and other populations. We observed a total of 150 alleles at 15 autosomal STR loci with the corresponding allelic frequencies ranging from 0.0023 to 0.5210, and the combined powe...

Timely removal of DNA recombination intermediates is critical for genome stability. The DNA helicase-topoisomerase complex, Sgs1-Top3-Rmi1 (STR), is the major pathway for processing these intermediates to generate conservative products. However, the mechanisms that promote STR-mediated functions remain to be defined. Here we show that Sgs1 binds to poly-SUMO chains and associates with the Smc5/...

Electrophysiological studies in patients and animal models of Parkinson's disease (PD) often reported increased burst activity of neurons in the basal ganglia. Neurons in the globus pallidus external (GPe) segment in 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA)-treated hemi-parkinsonian rats fire with strong bursts interrupted by pauses. The goal of this study was to evaluate the hypothesis that dopamine (DA)-de...

Experiments in both conscious and anesthetized animals indicate that intrathecal (i.t.) strychnine (STR; glycine receptor antagonist) produces acute, reversible allodynia, as evidenced by inappropriate behavioral and autonomic responses to cutaneous tactile stimuli. Although STR is known to produce disinhibition of afferent input to the spinal cord, changes in spinal reflexes cannot fully expla...

Water A total of 100 water samples were collected from different poultry and cattle farms in Behera province to be evaluated bacteriologically to investigate the role of drinking water as a source of pathogenic and potentially pathogenic bacteria in different animal farms including cattle and poultry. The results of bacteriological examination of 25 water samples collected from broiler farms r...