BACKGROUND Since 1971, Kenya has had repeated cholera outbreaks. However, the cause of seasonal epidemics of cholera is not fully understood and neither are the factors that drive epidemics, both in Kenya and globally. OBJECTIVES The objectives of the study were to determine the environmental reservoirs of V. cholerae during an interepidemic period in Kenya and to characterise their virulence...

The influence of three cooking methods (stewing, microwaving and Aluminium (Al) foil-baking) was evaluated on the content of intramuscular lipid and the composition of intramuscular fatty acids of Hyla rabbit. The percentage of intramuscular lipid in cooked-longissimus dorsi (LD) (dry weight %) were in the order mentioned below: microwaving > foil-baking > stewing. All treated samples showed de...

The treefrogs (Hylidae) make up one of the most species-rich families of amphibians. With 885 species currently described, they contain >13% of all amphibian species. In recent years, there has been considerable progress in resolving hylid phylogeny. However, the most comprehensive phylogeny to date (Wiens et al., 2006) included only 292 species, was based only on parsimony, provided only poor ...

Because of high numbers of animals killed on Paynes Prairie State Preserve, Alachua County, Florida, the Florida Department of Transportation constructed a barrier wall-culvert system to reduce wildlife mortality yet allow for passage of some animals across the highway. During a one year study following construction, we counted only 158 animals, excluding hylid treefrogs, killed in the same are...

Objective(s): Streptococcus pyogenes produces extracellular hyaluronidase enzyme. This enzyme is directly associated with the spread of the organism during infection. The objective of the present study was to clone and express the nucleotide sequence of the enzyme which is involved in hyaluronidase enzymatic activity. Materials and Methods: The enzymatic region of hyaluronidase gene was detecte...

The origins of tick toxicoses remain a subject of controversy because no molecular data are yet available to study the evolution of tick-derived toxins. In this study we describe the molecular structure of toxins from the soft tick, Ornithodoros savignyi. The tick salivary gland proteins (TSGPs) are four highly abundant proteins proposed to play a role in salivary gland granule biogenesis of th...

In the study, in addition to antibacterial effect of astaxanthin on Aeromonas hydrophila and A. sobria strains, presence virulence genes (Aero, act, ast, hylA) antibiotic resistance (tetC sulI) strains was investigated. Antibiotic profiles were also investigated as part study. Strains identified by conventional biochemical tests PCR assay using a 16S rDNA primer pair specific for hydrophila. Ac...

Ten species of Hyla with 2n = 30 from Brazilian fauna were analysed cytogenetically. Hyla minuta is the unique presenting all bi-armed metacentric or submetacentric chromosomes in the karyotype, therefore, with the highest FN = 60. The remaining species have a variable number of uni-armed telocentric or subtelocentric chromosomes: H. cruzi, H. elianeae, and H. rubicundula with three pairs (FN =...

Genomewide analyses of distances between orthologous gene pairs from the ascidian species Ciona intestinalis and Ciona savignyi were compared with those of vertebrates. Combining this data with a detailed and careful use of vertebrate fossil records, we estimated the time of divergence between the two ascidians nearly 180 My. This estimation was obtained after correcting for the different subst...