We report a highly sensitive, rapid and reliable method for the detection of Bacillus Anthracis spores at 300/mL using a piezoelectric-excited millimeter-sized cantilever (PEMC) sensor. Antibody specific to Bacillus anthracis (BA, Sterne strain 7702) spores was immobilized on PEMC sensors, and exposed to spores (300 to 3x10 spores/mL). The resonant frequency decreased at a rate proportional to ...

13 strains of bacteria were isolated from 12 shoes that were worn by children aged 6 to 12 for more than half a year. Through morphological observation, physiological and biochemical measurements, as well as 16SrRNA sequence analysis, the bacteria were identified as follows: Bacillus licheniformis, Bacillus subtilis (5 subspecies), Bacillus spore (3 subspecies), Bacillus anthracis, Staphylococc...

Bacillus anthracis is a spore-forming, Gram-positive microorganism. It is a causative agent of anthrax, a highly infectious disease. It belongs to the "Bacillus cereus group", which contains other closely related species, including Bacillus cereus, Bacillus thuringiensis, Bacillus mycoides, Bacillus weihenstephanensis, and Bacillus pseudomycoides. B. anthracis naturally occurs in soil environme...

Bacillus anthracis spores are the infectious form of the organism for humans and animals. However, the approved human vaccine in the United States is derived from a vegetative culture filtrate of a toxigenic, nonencapsulated B. anthracis strain that primarily contains protective antigen (PA). Immunization of mice with purified spore proteins and formalin-inactivated spores (FIS) from a nonencap...

Anthrax, caused by Bacillus anthracis, is a fatal disease and all the warm bloodedanimals are susceptible to this disease. Many livestock populated areas in Pakistan endemic forAnthrax (Thappa Karthikeyan 2001), therefore population annually vaccinatedagainst Anthrax. Veterinary Research Institute (VRI) has been producing Anthrax Spore Vaccine(ASV) for couple of decades. The current study was d...

Pulmonary exposure to Bacillus anthracis spores initiates inhalational anthrax, a life-threatening infection. It is known that dormant spores can be recovered from the lungs of infected animals months after the initial spore exposure. Consequently, a 60-day course antibiotic treatment is recommended for exposed individuals. However, there has been little information regarding details or mechani...

Bacillus anthracis spores have been used as biological weapons and the possibility of their further use requires surveillance systems that can accurately and reliably detect their presence in the environment. These systems must collect samples from a variety of matrices, process the samples, and detect the spores. The processing of the sample may include removal of inhibitors, concentration of ...

Bacterial endospores can remain dormant for decades yet can respond to nutrients, germinate, and resume growth within minutes. An essential step in the germination process is degradation of the spore cortex peptidoglycan wall, and the SleB protein in Bacillus species plays a key role in this process. Stable incorporation of SleB into the spore requires the YpeB protein, and some evidence sugges...

Certain carbohydrates (rhamnose, 3-O-methyl rhamnose, and galactosamine) have been demonstrated to be present in Bacillus anthracis spores but absent in vegetative cells. Others have demonstrated that these spore-specific sugars are constituents of the glycoprotein BclA. In the current work, spore extracts were separated by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. A second col...

Bacillus spp. and Clostridium spp. form a specialized cell type, called a spore, during a multistep differentiation process that is initiated in response to starvation. Spores are protected by a morphologically complex protein coat. The Bacillus anthracis coat is of particular interest because the spore is the infective particle of anthrax. We determined the roles of several B. anthracis orthol...