微生物学技术

The continued increase in antibiotic resistance among bacterial pathogens, coupled with a decrease in infectious disease research among pharmaceutical companies, has escalated the need for novel and effective antibacterial chemotherapies. While current agents have emer ...

The analyses of numerous prokaryotic and eukaryotic genomes have revealed the presence of variable number tandem repeats (VNTRs). VNTR analysis is currently widely used to sub-speciate many bacterial, fungal, and viral pathogens and has facilitated a number of molecular epidemiol ...

The use of reverse genetics to generate recombinant viruses allows the researcher to investigate the exact functional significance of particular viral genes during the virus life cycle, by means of their deletion or modification in the viral genome. These studies can extend to the introdu ...

Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV), a double-stranded DNA virus in the herpesvirus family, is a ubiquitous virus that infects greater than 40–60% of the general population and up to 100% within some subpopulations and/or geographic areas (1). HCMV has a complex pathobiology because infection of i ...

Several diagnostic tools are available for the identification of acute and latent viral infections. Although newly developed nucleic acid amplification methods, such as the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), have proved to be very useful diagnostic procedures, conventional meth ...

The process of virus entry accomplishes the delivery of the viral genetic information into the cell so that replication can take place. Entry of enveloped viruses into mammalian cells requires that the virus attach to the host cell surface through an interaction between an envelope compone ...

As with numerous other branches of science, the study of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) infection has been revolutionized by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method first devised by Mullis and Faloona (1). PCR allows the in vitro amplification of HCMV DNA sequences by the simultaneous pri ...

Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV), a human herpesvirus, is the leading viral cause of birth defects (1,2). In acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) patients, HCMV can cause severely debilitating colitis and retinitis; it is now an increasingly common cause of life-threatening pneumo ...

One characteristic of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is the high complexity of its genome: the double-stranded DNA of approx 240 kbp contains the coding capacity for more than 200 different proteins (1,2). The genes encoding those proteins are expressed coordinately during the replicati ...

A key area in the study of infection by cytomegalovirus (CMV), or that of any other virus, is to gain an understanding of the manner in which viral proteins interact with those of the host cell. The most widely used method to identify interactions between viral and cellular proteins in the infected cell is th ...

The study of strategies for the treatment of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) infection starts with the discovery of compounds that are potent and selective inhibitors of HCMV replication. Selectivity means that the window between the concentrations that block viral replication on the o ...

Inferential evidence from studies of immunosuppressed humans indicates the control of disease due to human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) in the persistently infected host (virus carrier) depends on the cellular immune response: cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) appear to be a particularly i ...

The family Pseudomonadaceae incorporates a broad range of species that are common inhabitants of soil, fresh water, and marine environments, where they are active in organic matter mineralization. Some species can cause diseases of plants, with various host specificities, whereas ot ...

Species within the genus Xanthomonas demonstrate pathogenesis to a variety of plant types, including rice, crucifers, cotton, wheat, peppers, tomatoes, and geraniums. However, Xanthomonas species do not respond well to chemical treatments that induce competence necessary for tr ...

The six species that make up the genus Brucella infect a wide variety of animals and humans (1). This bacterial species is gram-negative and classified as a facultative intracellular pathogen (reviewed in ref. 2). In the livestock industry of the United States and numerous countries throughout ...

Francisella tularensis is the gram-negative cocco-bacillus that is the etiologic agent of the highly infectious zoonosis, tularemia. In North America, tularemia presents as an acute febrile lymphadenitis that can progress into a life-threatening pneumonic illness (1). The disea ...

Vibrios are facultative anaerobes. They are gram-negative, oxidase-positive rods, and they are distributed in seawater and in the water at the mouths of rivers. According to Bergey’s Manual of Systematic Bacteriology, there are 20 species in the genus Vibrio, including the human pathogens V. ...

The greatest progress in development of methods for genetic manipulation of obligate anaerobic bacteria has been with the Bacteroides and Clostridium, which have become the model systems for gram-negative and gram-positive anaerobes, respectively. Advancement in the design of g ...

Agrobacterium tumefaciens and Agrobacterium rhizogenes are plant soil-borne pathogens. Plants infected by Agrobacterium develop symptoms of tumor formation or adventitious hairy roots (1). These symptoms result from the integration of a fragment of DNA (T-DNA) from the bacteri ...

Methods to microencapsulate enzymes and cells including recombinant enzymes, stem cells, and genetically engineered cells have been described in this chapter. More specific examples of enzyme encapsulation include the microencapsulation of xanthine oxidase for Lesch Nyhan ...