174 research outputs found
Isolation of Streptococcus Mutans and its Bacteriophage from Human Plaque Samples
Get PDFBackground: Streptococcus mutans (S. mutans) is one of the main agents of caries formation, mainly because of the ability to form biofilms on the tooth surface. Bacteriophage of S. mutans are viruses that can attack and limit the pathogenic activity of S. mutans, hence limiting their cariogenic effect and preventing dental caries. There is a deficiency in the literature on the successful isolation of phage against S. mutans. Aims: The purpose of this study is to isolate S. mutans strains from clinical plaque samples, screen those samples for phage and test them against laboratory type cultures for phage. Methods: Thirty-eight clinical plaque samples were collected from participants using ESwab (Copan Italia, Brescia, Italy) and cultured on Brain Heart Infusion (BHI) and Tryptone-yeast-cysteine-sucrose-bacitracin (TYCSB) agars to isolate S. mutans strains. Following isolation and identification by Gram stain and PCR, phage screening by spot assay against laboratory type cultures was carried out. Six NCTC S. mutans strains (10832, 10919, 10920, 10923, 11060, 11061) and twelve type strains provided by Newcastle University (S. mutans UA159, 10449, UA140, Ingbritt, GS5, sobrinus 12279, gordonii DL1, sanguinis SK36, oralis 34, tigurinus JP1BV1, oligofermentans LR11BV4 and Actinomyces oris MG1) were all used for spotting. Results: The isolation of S. mutans strains from the clinical samples was successful. TYCSB agar showed to be selective for S. mutans while BHI media showed rich growth of different colonies. Gram stain was performed on the suspected colonies and confirmed later by PCR for S. mutans. On spot assay, no evidence of phage lysis was found within pooled filtrate samples against NCTC type strains and Newcastle type strains. Conclusion: The isolation of S. mutans from clinical samples was achieved using TYCSB media. Phage isolation was unsuccessful from the 38 clinical plaque samples probably due to low frequency of their natural occurrence. Isolation of Streptococcus mutans and bacteriophage from human plaque sample
Single mothers by choice: Parenting and child adjustment in middle childhood.
Get PDFFindings are presented of the second phase of a longitudinal study of families created by single mothers by choice. Forty-four single heterosexual mothers were compared with 37 partnered heterosexual mothers, all with a donor-conceived child aged around 8-10 years. Standardized interview, observational, and questionnaire measures of maternal wellbeing, mother-child relationships and child adjustment were administered to mothers, children, and teachers. There were no differences in maternal mental health, the quality of mother-child relationships or children's emotional and behavioral problems between family types. However, higher levels of parenting stress and higher levels of children's prior adjustment difficulties were each associated with children's adjustment difficulties in middle childhood irrespective of family type. The findings suggest that the presence of two parents-or of a male parent-is not essential for children to flourish, and add to the growing body of evidence that family structure is less influential in children's adjustment than the quality of family relationships. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).The Wellcome Trus
Isolation of Streptococcus Mutans and its Bacteriophage from Human Plaque Samples
Get PDFBackground: Streptococcus mutans (S. mutans) is one of the main agents of caries formation, mainly because of the ability to form biofilms on the tooth surface. Bacteriophage of S. mutans are viruses that can attack and limit the pathogenic activity of S. mutans, hence limiting their cariogenic effect and preventing dental caries. There is a deficiency in the literature on the successful isolation of phage against S. mutans. Aims: The purpose of this study is to isolate S. mutans strains from clinical plaque samples, screen those samples for phage and test them against laboratory type cultures for phage. Methods: Thirty-eight clinical plaque samples were collected from participants using ESwab (Copan Italia, Brescia, Italy) and cultured on Brain Heart Infusion (BHI) and Tryptone-yeast-cysteine-sucrose-bacitracin (TYCSB) agars to isolate S. mutans strains. Following isolation and identification by Gram stain and PCR, phage screening by spot assay against laboratory type cultures was carried out. Six NCTC S. mutans strains (10832, 10919, 10920, 10923, 11060, 11061) and twelve type strains provided by Newcastle University (S. mutans UA159, 10449, UA140, Ingbritt, GS5, sobrinus 12279, gordonii DL1, sanguinis SK36, oralis 34, tigurinus JP1BV1, oligofermentans LR11BV4 and Actinomyces oris MG1) were all used for spotting. Results: The isolation of S. mutans strains from the clinical samples was successful. TYCSB agar showed to be selective for S. mutans while BHI media showed rich growth of different colonies. Gram stain was performed on the suspected colonies and confirmed later by PCR for S. mutans. On spot assay, no evidence of phage lysis was found within pooled filtrate samples against NCTC type strains and Newcastle type strains. Conclusion: The isolation of S. mutans from clinical samples was achieved using TYCSB media. Phage isolation was unsuccessful from the 38 clinical plaque samples probably due to low frequency of their natural occurrence. Isolation of Streptococcus mutans and bacteriophage from human plaque sample
Fulminant immune-mediated necrotising myopathy (IMNM) mimicking myocardial infarction with non-obstructive coronary arteries (MINOCA)
Get PDFA 74-year-old man, with inflammatory arthritis, recently commenced on adalimumab, presented with a 4-week history of left-sided chest pain, malaise and shortness of breath. Admission ECG showed age-indeterminate left bundle branch block. Troponin T was 4444 ng/L (normal range <15 ng/L) and acute coronary syndrome treatment was commenced. Catheter angiogram revealed mild-burden non-obstructive coronary disease. Cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) was performed to refine the differential diagnosis and demonstrated no myocardial oedema or late gadolinium enhancement. Extracardiac review highlighted oedema and enhancement of the left shoulder girdle muscles consistent with acute myositis. Creatine kinase was subsequently measured and significantly elevated at 7386 IU/L (normal range 30–200 IU/L in men). Electrophoresis clarified that this was of predominantly skeletal muscle origin. Myositis protocol MRI revealed florid skeletal muscle oedema. The MR findings, together with positive anti-Scl-70 antibodies, suggested fulminant immune-mediated necrotising myopathy presenting as a rare mimic of myocardial infarction with non-obstructive coronary arteries, diagnosed by careful extracardiac CMR review
Widespread distribution of a group I Intron and Its three deletion derivatives in the Lysin Gene of Streptococcus thermophilus Bacteriophages.
Get PDFOf 62 Streptococcus thermophilus bacteriophages isolated from various ecological settings, half contain a lysingene interrupted by a group IA2 intron. Phage mRNA splicing was demonstrated. Five phages possess a variantform of the intron resulting from three distinct deletion events located in the intron-harbored open readingframe (orf 253). The predicted orf 253 gene sequence showed a significantly lower GC content than thesurrounding intron and lysin gene sequences, and the predicted protein shared a motif with endonucleasesfound in phages from both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. A comparison of the phage lysin genesrevealed a clear division between intron-containing and intron-free alleles, leading to the establishment of a14-bp consensus sequence associated with intron possession. The conserved intron was not found elsewhere inthe phage or S. thermophilus bacterial genomes. Folding of the intron RNA revealed secondary structureelements shared with other phage introns: first, a 38-bp insertion between regions P3 and P4 that can be foldedinto two stem-loop structures (shared with introns from Bacillus phage SPO1 and relatives); second, aconserved P7.2 region (shared with all phage introns); third, the location of the stop codon from orf 253 in theP8 stem (shared with coliphage T4 and Bacillus phage SPO1 introns); fourth, orf 253, which has sequencesimilarity with the H-N-H motif of putative endonuclease genes found in introns from Lactococcus, Lactobacillus,and Bacillus phages
The Child and Parent Emotion Study: Protocol for a longitudinal study of parent emotion socialisation and child socioemotional development
Full text linkIntroduction: Parents shape child emotional competence and mental health via their beliefs about children’s emotions, emotion-related parenting, the emotional climate of the family and by modelling emotion regulation skills. However, much of the research evidence to date has been based on small samples with mothers of primary school-aged children. Further research is needed to elucidate the direction and timing of associations for mothers and fathers/partners across different stages of child development. The Child and Parent Emotion Study (CAPES) aims to examine longitudinal associations between parent emotion socialisation, child emotion regulation and socioemotional adjustment at four time points from pregnancy to age 12 years. CAPES will investigate the moderating role of parent gender, child temperament and gender, and family background.Methods and analysis: CAPES recruited 2063 current parents from six English-speaking countries of a child 0–9 years and 273 prospective parents (ie, women/their partners pregnant with their first child) in 2018–2019. Participants will complete a 20–30 min online survey at four time points 12 months apart, to be completed in December 2022. Measures include validated parent-report tools assessing parent emotion socialisation (ie, parent beliefs, the family emotional climate, supportive parenting and parent emotion regulation) and age-sensitive measures of child outcomes (ie, emotion regulation and socioemotional adjustment). Analyses will use mixed-effects regression to simultaneously assess associations over three time-point transitions (ie, T1 to T2; T2 to T3; T3 to T4), with exposure variables lagged to estimate how past factors predict outcomes 12 months later.Ethics and dissemination: Ethics approval was granted by the Deakin University Human Research Ethics Committee and the Deakin University Faculty of Health Human Research Ethics Committee. We will disseminate results through conferences and open access publications. We will invite parent end users to co-develop our dissemination strategy, and discuss the interpretation of key findings prior to publication.Trial registeration: Protocol pre-registration: DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/NGWUY.</jats:sec
Decision-making in palliative care:patient and family caregiver concordance and discordance - systematic review and narrative synthesis
Get PDFEvidence: A Guide for the Uncertain
Get PDFAssume that it is your evidence that determines what opinions you should have. I argue that since you should take peer disagreement seriously, evidence must have two features. (1) It must sometimes warrant being modest: uncertain what your evidence warrants, and (thus) uncertain whether you’re rational. (2) But it must always warrant being guided: disposed to treat your evidence as a guide. Surprisingly, it is very difficult to vindicate both (1) and (2). But diagnosing why this is so leads to a proposal—Trust—that is weak enough to allow modesty but strong enough to yield many guiding features. In fact, I claim that Trust is the Goldilocks principle—for it is necessary and sufficient to vindicate the claim that you should always prefer to use free evidence. Upshot: Trust lays the foundations for a theory of disagreement and, more generally, an epistemology that permits self-doubt—a modest epistemology
Genome and proteome analysis of phage E3 infecting the soil-borne actinomyceteRhodococcus equi: Rhodococcusbacteriophage E3
Get PDFWe report on the characterization and genomic analysis of bacteriophage E3 isolated from soil and propagating in Rhodococcus equi strains. Phage E3 has a circular genome of 142?563?bp and is the first Myoviridae reported for the genus Rhodococcus and for a non-mycobacterial actinomycete. Phylogenetic analyses placed E3 in a distinct Myoviridae clade together with Mycobacterium phages Bxz1 and Myrna. The highly syntenic genomes of this myoviridal group comprise vertically evolving core phage modules flanked by hyperplastic regions specific to each phage and rich in horizontally acquired DNA. The hyperplastic regions contain numerous tRNA genes in the mycobacteriophages which are absent in E3, possibly reflecting bacterial host-specific translation-related phage fitness constraints associated with rate-limiting tRNAs. A structural proteome analysis identified 28 E3 polypeptides, including 15 not previously known to be virion-associated proteins. The E3 genome and comparative analysis provide insight into short-term genome evolution and adaptive plasticity in tailed phages from the environmental microbiome
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