Latest Corynebacterineae Stories
The factors instrumental in triggering latent tuberculosis (TB) infection to progress into active disease have long remained elusive to researchers. New insight into the mystery is provided by Professor David Russell, speaking at the Society for General Microbiology's spring meeting in Edinburgh on Sunday. His work could help develop innovative strategies for treating the disease.Professor Russell and his group at Cornell University in New York, USA, have demonstrated that TB-causing bacteria...
Findings could help tame extremely drug-resistant strainsResearchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found two novel ways of killing the bacteria that cause tuberculosis (TB), a disease responsible for an estimated two million deaths each year. The findings, published in the March 21 online issue of Nature Chemical Biology, could lead to a potent TB therapy that would also prevent resistant TB strains from developing."This approach is totally different...
Badger culling is unlikely to be a cost-effective way of helping control cattle TB in Britain, according to research published today in PLoS ONE. The authors of the study, from Imperial College London and the Zoological Society of London, say their findings suggest that the benefits of repeated widespread badger culling, in terms of reducing the incidence of cattle TB, disappear within four years after the culling has ended.Bovine tuberculosis (bTB) is a disease in cattle that has a serious...
Researchers at the MUHC and their international colleagues have identified the first genetic resistance factor against tuberculosis infectionWhy do some people who are exposed to tuberculosis not become infected or develop the disease? Dr. Erwin Schurr and his team at the Research Institute from the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC), in collaboration with Dr. Alexandre Alcais, from the Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale (INSERM) in Paris, has shed light on...
For thousands of years an undesirable and persistent companion has been traveling with man wherever he goes. Mycobacterium leprae, the bacterium that causes leprosy, has only one known natural host "“ mankind. And because of man's many travels, this bacillus has colonized the entire earth. Its history is therefore intimately tied to our own, and it is this migratory relationship that Stewart Cole, EPFL professor of Microbial Pathogenesis, and his team have analyzed in a study to be...
A bacterium possibly linked to Crohn's disease could be lurking in wild animals. According to research published in the open access journal BMC Microbiology, Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis (Map), can be transmitted between wildlife and domestic ruminants, supporting the theory of wildlife reservoirs of infection.A research team lead by Karen Stevenson, from the Moredun Research Institute in Scotland, used three different genotyping techniques to identify specific strains of...
Researchers at Iowa State University have identified an enzyme that helps make tuberculosis resistant to a human's natural defense system. Researchers have also found a method to possibly neutralize that enzyme, which may someday lead to a cure for tuberculosis.Tuberculosis is caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis and is a contagious disease that is on the rise, killing 1.5 to 2 million people worldwide annually.Reuben Peters, associate professor in the department of biochemistry, biophysics...
A new study lays the groundwork for development of a cost-effective tool for studying the population structure and spread of Mycobacterium ulcerans, the causative agent of Buruli ulcer. Researchers at the Swiss Tropical Institute, Basel, Switzerland, and the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, Legon, Ghana, developed SNP typing assays to systematically profile genetic diversity among M. ulcerans isolates by sequencing and comparing the genomes of selected strains.The findings,...
A British government scientist is believed to have contracted bovine tuberculosis from an infected badger, a government official said. Thirty other staff members employed by the government's Food and Environment Research Agency in Woodchester, England, near Stroud, are also being tested for the often deadly infectious disease, said Alison Wilson, FERA's head of executive support. This is the first time a suspected case of mycobacterium bovis has jumped the species barrier and caused human...
Mycobacterium tuberculosis is arguably the world's most successful infectious agent because it knows how to avoid elimination by slowing its own growth to a crawl. Now, a report in the July 10 issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication, offers new insight into the bugs' talent for meager living."Tuberculosis can resist the host immune system and remain latent for decades," said Michael Glickman of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. To do so, the mycobacterium...
Latest Corynebacterineae Reference Libraries
Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) is a pathogenic bacterial species in the genus Mycobacterium and the causative agent of most cases of tuberculosis. Robert Koch first discovered it in 1882 and that it had an unusual, waxy coating on the cell surface which makes them impossible to Gram stain. M. tuberculosis is highly aerobic and requires high levels of oxygen. It generally infects the respiratory system of mammals. Tuberculin skin test, acid-fast stain, and chest radiographs are the most...
Mycobacterium smegmatis is 3.0 to 5.0 µm long with a bacillus shape, an acid-fast bacterial species in the phylum Actinobacteria. It can be stained by Ziehl-Neelsen method and the auramine-rhodamine fluorescent method. It was first reported in 1884. Alvarez and Tavel found organisms similar to Lustgarten, who first discovered Mycobacterium. This organism was later named M. smegmatis. It is considered a non-pathogenic microorganism although, in rare cases, it can cause disease. M....
Mycobacterium leprae, mostly found in warm tropical countries, is a bacterium that causes leprosy (Hansen's disease). It is an intracellular, pleomorphic, acid-fast bacterium. M. leprae is an aerobic rod-shaped surrounded by the characteristic waxy coating unique to mycobacteria tuberculosis. Due to its thick waxy coating, M. leprae stains with a carbol fuscin rather than with the traditional Gram stain. Gerhard Armauer Hansen first discovered it in 1873. It was the first bacterium to be...
Mycobacterium bovis is a slow-growing, aerobic bacterium and the causative agent of tuberculosis in cattle. Similar to M. tuberculosis, M. bovis can jump the species barrier and cause tuberculosis in humans. It is estimated that M. bovis was responsible for more losses among farm animals than all other diseases combined in the first half of the 20th century. Infection happens after bacterium is ingested. It is generally transmitted to humans via infected milk. Actual human infections are...
Corynebacterium diphtheriae is a pathogenic bacterium that causes diphtheria. It was discovered in 1884. There are four subspecies C. diphtheriae mitis, C. diphtheriae intermedius, C. diphtheriae gravis, and C. diphtheriae belfanti. They all are a little bit different in their colonial morphology and biochemical properties such as the ability to metabolize certain nutrients. The diphtheria toxin gene is encoded by a bacteriophage which is found in toxigenic strain. A gram stain is...
