Published in Virulence
Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a fatal genetic disorder hallmarked by chronic and persistent microbial infections of the lungs and airways. Much attention has been paid to describing microbial communities and microbial pathogenesis in CF, however, viral communities have been largely ignored. We recently published a metagenomic study characterizing viral c...
Published in Virulence
Published in Virulence
Virulence is thought to coevolve as a result of reciprocal selection between pathogens and their hosts. This paper focuses on coevolution between microbial proteinases operating as virulence factors and host defense molecules of insects. Owing to shorter generation times and smaller genomes, microbes exhibit a high evolutionary adaptability in comp...
Published in Virulence
The human bacterial pathogen Campylobacter jejuni is able to respond to environmental stimuli utilising chemotactic motility. The bacterial senses external molecules via transmembrane sensory proteins called Transducer Like Proteins, TLPs. The specificity of the Tlp1 chemoreceptor (Cj1506c) of C. jejuni as the aspartate receptor, CcaA, and its role...
Published in Virulence
Published in Virulence
The recently sequenced genome of the obligate intracellular amoeba symbiont 'Candidatus Amoebophilus asiaticus' is unique among prokaryotic genomes due to its extremely large fraction of genes encoding proteins harboring eukaryotic domains such as ankyrin-repeats, TPR/SEL1 repeats, leucine-rich repeats, as well as F- and U-box domains, most of whic...
Published in Virulence
Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) are caused by infectious agents with stable virulence characteristics that are not encoded by the host. Agent-specific features of virulence include variable disease latency and tissue pathology in a given host, as well as the ability to spread to many species. Such cross-species infections contradic...
Published in Virulence
The Us3 serine threonine kinases perform multiple roles in alphaherpesvirus infection and can localize to distinct subcellular compartments. Transient expression of Us3 in cells results in two dramatic alterations of the actin cytoskeleton: production of actin-based filamentous processes (FPs); and breakdown of actin stress fibres giving rise to ro...
Published in Virulence
Type I and II interferons (IFNs αβ and γ) have opposing effects on immune resistance to certain pathogenic bacteria. While IFNγ generally plays a protective role, IFNαβ exacerbates Listeria monocytogenes and Mycobacterium tuberculosis infections. Our findings provided evidence that this increased susceptibility reflects a novel antagonistic cross t...
Published in Virulence
A vaccine against HIV able to generate properly neutralizing antibodies and an efficacious cytotoxic T lymphocyte response is of paramount importance. We are proposing a novel approach based on the collection of thousand small HIV-infected human plasma samples for preparing a global vaccine, able to counteract HIV diversity and mutagenicity. The po...
