Bacillus anthracis, the etiological agent of anthrax, is a spore-forming gram-positive bacterium. Infection with this pathogen results in multisystem dysfunction and death. The pathogenicity of B. anthracis is due to the production of virulence factors, including edema toxin (ET). Recently, we established the protective role of type-IIA secreted phospholipase A2 (sPLA2-IIA) against B. anthracis...

background: bacillus anthracis may usually cause three forms of anthrax: inhalation, gastrointestinal and cutaneous. the gastrointestinal (gi) anthrax develops after eating contaminated meat. thus, in this paper were report 5 cases of intestinal anthrax. case presentation: we report a case series of intestinal anthrax, with history of consumption of raw or poorly cooked liver of sheep. one pati...

Bacillus cereus strains that are genetically closely related to B. anthracis can display anthrax-like virulence traits (A. R. Hoffmaster et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 101:8449-8454, 2004). Hence, approaches that rapidly identify these "near neighbors" are of great interest for the study of B. anthracis virulence mechanisms, as well as to prevent the use of such strains for B. anthracis-bas...

to isolate and detect anthrax spores form soil in different regions of iran in order to find the anthrax foci‚ a total of 668 environmental specimens were collected during 2003-2004. bacterial endospores were extracted from soil specimens via flotation in distilled water, incubation at room temperature, filtration, heat shock and culture on blood agar and selective plet media. bacillus anthraci...

Bacillus anthracis spores contain on their surface multilayered protein coats that provide barrier properties, mechanical strength, and elasticity that aid in protecting the sporulated state and preventing germination, outgrowth, and transition into the virulent vegetative bacterial state. In this work, the antimicrobial peptide (AMP) chrysophsin-3 was tested against B. anthracis in each of the...

Background: To highlight the magnitude of important challenge now facing scientists, drug resistance needs exploration novel antimicrobial agents. The identification new and vital target in bacteria then designing their inhibitors can be explored. Thus, targeting SecA, a central component bacterial general secretion system, is promising strategy for development antimicrobials. Objective: evalua...

The use of Bacillus anthracis as a biological weapon in 2001 heightened awareness of the need for validated methods for the inactivation of B. anthracis spores. This study determined the gamma irradiation dose for inactivating virulent B. anthracis spores in suspension and its effects on real-time PCR and antigen detection assays. Strains representing eight genetic groups of B. anthracis were e...

Tyrosine site-specific recombinases (T-SSR) are polynucleotidyltransferases that catalyze cutting and joining reactions between short specific DNA sequences. We developed three systems for performing genetic modifications in Bacillus anthracis that use T-SSR and their cognate target sequences, namely Escherichia coli bacteriophage P1 Cre-loxP, Saccharomyces cerevisiae Flp-FRT, and a newly disco...

Anthrax is a zoonotic disease that is also well recognized as a potential agent of bioterrorism. Routine culture and biochemical testing methods are useful for the identification of Bacillus anthracis, but a definitive identification may take 24 to 48 h or longer and may require that specimens be referred to another laboratory. Virulent isolates of B. anthracis contain two plasmids (pX01 and pX...

Emerging B. cereus strains that cause anthrax-like disease have been isolated in Cameroon (CA strain) and Côte d'Ivoire (CI strain). These strains are unusual, because their genomic characterisation shows that they belong to the B. cereus species, although they harbour two plasmids, pBCXO1 and pBCXO2, that are highly similar to the pXO1 and pXO2 plasmids of B. anthracis that encode the toxins a...