微生物学技术

Legionellae are important etiological agents of pneumonia. Legionella pneumophila (predominantly serogroup 1) is detected in most cases of legionellosis; other species only occasionally cause infections, predominantly in immunocompromized patients (1–4). Aquifero ...

Some molds produce desirable changes in food, but most are merely esthetically undesirable. There has also been an increasing awareness that certain metabolic products of some molds commonly found on foods and feed are dangerous to humans and animals. These toxin substances, mycotoxins, ...

Humans have now been growing and storing enough food for a long enough time that some rapidly evolving organisms, such as fungi, are moving into niches created by the exploitation of certain plants as food (1).

Infections caused by fungi (mycoses) are increasingly reported in many countries owing to greater life expectancy associated with an increase in quality of medical and surgical procedures, as well as the emergence of diseases or infections that affect the immune system such as AIDS. Nosoc ...

Hepatitis A virus (HAV) infection is the leading cause of viral hepatitis throughout the world (1). HAV infection is mainly propagated via the fecal-oral route (2), and waterborne (3) and foodborne (4–8) outbreaks of the disease have been reported.

Rotavirus is the primary etiological agent of gastroenteritis in infants and young children worldwide (1). In developing countries, it is estimated that rotavirus is responsible for one-third of all diarrhea-associated hospitalizations and 873,000 deaths annually (2,3). In indu ...

Recently, an integrated cell culture/polymerase chain reaction (ICC/PCR) technique has been developed for the detection of viruses in environmental samples providing a reliable method for practical analysis and direct monitoring of environmental samples for viral pathogens ...

Human rotaviruses are considered the main cause of viral gastroenteritis in infants and young children throughout the world (1). Their transmission is through the fecaloral route, mostly after ingestion of contaminated water and food (2). Since an extremely high number of virus particl ...

Salmonella enterica is widely recognized as a major cause of foodborne diseases in humans and animals and has been isolated from environmental sources in increasing numbers worldwide (1,2). Conventional typing methods such as serotyping and phage typing have been and still are the mains ...

Thermophilic Campylobacter spp., mainly Campylobacter jejuni and to a lesser extent C. coli are recognized as the most common bacteriological causes of gastroenteritis in humans (1). As enteric infection with Campylobacter organisms cannot be distinguished from that caused by oth ...

Antimicrobial resistance determinants may be transferred among bacteria via mobile genetic elements including plasmids, transposons, and the more recently explored integrons (1). Integrons are naturally occurring genetic elements found as part of the Tn21 transposon family ...

Particle bombardment is a physical method of cell transformation that can be applied in vitro as well as in vivo (1,2). The DNA- or RNA-coated gold particles that are generally used are of high density, subcellular in size, and are accelerated to high velocity to carry the genetic information into cells. ...

The Herpesviruses family consists of over 100 distinct viruses that are responsible for a variety of important human and veterinary diseases. These viruses are subclassified into alpha-, beta-, or gamma- herpesviruses, dependent upon a variety of criteria. Eight herpesviruses are hum ...

For mutagenesis of BAC-cloned herpesvirus genomes, we have adapted a two-step replacement procedure originally described by O’Connor et al. (1) for the manipulation of large DNA segments in Escherichia coli (E. coli). In principle, the mutant allele to be introduced is provided on a so-called s ...

In the last few years, mutagenesis of viruses with large DNA genomes (like the herpesviruses) was simplified by cloning the viral genomes as bacterial artificial chromosomes (BACs) and their subsequent transfer into Escherichia coli (E. coli.). Owing to the high frequency of restriction s ...

Viruses are parasites that are strictly dependent on the host cell for replication. In general, the more complex a virus, the more complicated the network of interactions between the virus and the host. Many of these interactions are still unrevealed or not understood in detail. The generation of ...

Transgenic mice provide an important experimental system for studying the effects of gene overexpression and for analyzing the expression of well-characterized “single” genes that contribute to a particular trait. However, single-gene expression in transgenic (Tg) mice is not ap ...

Microinjection of DNA into the pronuclei of fertilized oocytes is one of the two most commonly used methods for gene transfer into the mouse genome (1,2). The first successful attempt to perform this technique was carried out by Lin in 1966 (3), who could show that the early fertilized embryo could surv ...

Many functional studies require the transfection of bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) clones into mammalian cells. Because most BAC vectors do not have a mammalian selection marker or do not have one suitable for all cell types, it is usually necessary to modify BAC clones to include a sele ...

While much is known about the structure of the nucleosome, how a chain of contiguous nucleosomes rearranges to form a fiber is much less understood. Microscopical techniques with nucleosomal resolution (electron microscopy and the newly emerging probe microscopies) have been useful ...