Virulence Factors

Virulence factors are molecules expressed and secreted by pathogens (bacteria, viruses, fungi and protozoa) that enable them to achieve the following: * colonization of a niche in the host (this i...

Tissue Growth Factors BMP 2

The classical tissue factors typically are proteins used for tissue repair and growth stimulation. Among the approved products are the growth factors PDGF, IGF, EGF, BMP and FGF. One of the commercial...

Crohns Disease

Crohns Disease is a chronic inflammatory disease, affecting the whole of the alimentary tract from mouth to anus, and all layers of the gut wall. The most commonly affected sites are the terminal il...

Physiologic factors

Plasma Factors

Stabilization of cooperative virulence by the expression of an avirulent phenotype

Pathogens often infect hosts through collective actions: they secrete growth-promoting compounds or virulence factors, or evoke host reactions that fuel the colonization of the host. Such behaviours a...

Virulence Profile of Uropathogenic E. Coli in Pakistan

This phylogenetic analysis investigated the distribution of virulence genes and cytotoxic effects of uropathogenic E.coli in order to characterize the local isolates in Pakistan. Annals of Clinical...

Metallothioneins play major role in virulence of Cryptococcus neoformans

Metallothioneins, proteins able to capture metal ions, play a major role in the virulence of Cryptococcus neoformans, a fungal pathogen which causes severe infections in immunodeficient and immunocomp...

Pathogen turns protein into a virulence factor in one easy step

To infect its host, the respiratory pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa takes an ordinary protein usually involved in making other proteins and adds three small molecules to turn it into a key for gaining...

Lab Notes: Disarming Darth Vader

(MedPage Today) -- Removing virulence factors from pathogenic bacteria could be a new way to fight infections, by taming rather than killing them. Also: thanks to epigenetics, learned behaviors may be...

Pathogen turns protein into a virulence factor in 1 easy step

(American Society for Microbiology) To infect its host, the respiratory pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa takes an ordinary protein usually involved in making other proteins and adds three small molecul...

Cigarette smoke boosts virulence in Staphylococcus aureus

Exposure to cigarette smoke has long been associated with increased frequency of respiratory infections—which are harder to treat in smoke-exposed people than in those who lack such exposures. Now R...

Fucose sensing regulates bacterial intestinal colonization

The mammalian gastrointestinal tract provides a complex and competitive environment for the microbiota. Successful colonization by pathogens requires scavenging nutrients, sensing chemical signals, co...

Phenotypic characterization and putative virulence factors of human, animal and environmental isolates of Plesiomonas shigelloides.

Plesiomonas shigelloides (a bacterium widely distributed in aquatic ecosystems causing both intestinal and extra-intestinal diseases) shows a host of putative virulence markers, such as hemolysins, cy...

List-method directed forgetting: The forget cue improves both encoding and retrieval of postcue information.

In list-method directed forgetting, people are cued to forget a previously studied item list and to learn a new list instead. Such cuing typically leads to forgetting of the first list and to memory e...

A secretome-based methodology may provide a better characterization of the virulence of Listeria monocytogenes: preliminary results.

Four strains of Listeria monocytogenes with different levels of virulence were studied. Two strains were consistently evaluated as virulent (strain 3077) and of low virulence (strain 3993), whereas th...

Item-specific encoding produces an additional benefit of directed forgetting: Evidence from intrusion errors.

List-method directed forgetting involves encoding 2 lists, between which half of the participants are told to forget List 1. When participants are free to study however they want, directed forgetting...

Cyt toxin expression reveals an inverse regulation of insect and plant virulence factors of Dickeya dadantii.

Summary The plant pathogenic bacteria Dickeya dadantii is also a pathogen of the pea aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum. The genome of the bacteria contains four cyt genes, encoding homologues of Bacillus thur...