Research Publications (Food Safety)

by Ilia Gelfat, Yousuf Aqeel, Jacqueline M. Tremblay, Justyna J. Jaskiewicz, Anishma Shrestha, James N. Lee, Shenglan Hu, Xi Qian, Loranne Magoun, Abhineet Sheoran, Daniela Bedenice, Colter Giem, Avinash Manjula-Basavanna, Amanda R. Pulsifer, Hann X. Tu, Xiaoli Li, Marilyn L. Minus, Marcia S. Osburne, Saul Tzipori, Charles B. Shoemaker, John M. Leong, Neel S.

by Jun Jie Wong, Foo Kiong Ho, Pei Yi Choo, Kelvin K. L. Chong, Chee Meng Benjamin Ho, Ramesh Neelakandan, Damien Keogh, Timothy Barkham, John Chen, Chuan Fa Liu, Kimberly A. Kline Wound infections are often polymicrobial in nature, biofilm associated and therefore tolerant to antibiotic therapy, and associated with delayed healing. Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus are among the most frequently cultured pathogens from wound infections.

by Jonathan Munera Lopez, Isadonna F. Tengganu, Jun Liu, John M. Murray, Luisa F. Arias Padilla, Ying Zhang, Peter T. Brown, Laurence Florens, Ke Hu The phylum Apicomplexa includes thousands of species of unicellular parasites that cause a wide range of human and animal diseases such as malaria and toxoplasmosis. To infect, the parasite must first initiate active movement to disseminate through tissue and invade into a host cell, and then cease moving once inside.

by Lauren K. Nicastro, Jaime de Anda, Neha Jain, Kaitlyn C. M. Grando, Amanda L. Miller, Shingo Bessho, Stefania Gallucci, Gerard C. L. Wong, Çagla Tükel Deposition of human amyloids is associated with complex human diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Amyloid proteins are also produced by bacteria.

by Atish Roy Chowdhury, Shivjee Sah, Umesh Varshney, Dipshikha Chakravortty Bacterial porins are highly conserved outer membrane proteins used in the selective transport of charged molecules across the membrane. In addition to their significant contributions to the pathogenesis of Gram-negative bacteria, their role(s) in salmonellosis remains elusive.

by Tridib Ganguly, Alexandra M. Peterson, Marissa Burkholder, Jessica K. Kajfasz, Jacqueline Abranches, José A. Lemos Zinc is a trace metal that is essential to all forms of life, but that becomes toxic at high concentrations. Because it has both antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory properties and low toxicity to mammalian cells, zinc has been used as a therapeutic agent for centuries to treat a variety of infectious and non-infectious conditions.

by Xupeng Hong, Stephan Menne, Jianming Hu Hepadnaviruses use extensively overlapping genes to expand their coding capacity, especially the precore/core genes encode the precore and core proteins with mostly identical sequences but distinct functions. The precore protein of the woodchuck hepatitis virus (WHV) is N-glycosylated, in contrast to the precore of the human hepatitis B virus (HBV) that lacks N-glycosylation.

by Haley N. Cartwright, Dominique J. Barbeau, Joshua D. Doyle, Ed Klein, Mark T. Heise, Martin T. Ferris, Anita K. McElroy Rift Valley fever (RVF) is an arboviral disease of humans and livestock responsible for severe economic and human health impacts. In humans, RVF spans a variety of clinical manifestations, ranging from an acute flu-like illness to severe forms of disease, including late-onset encephalitis.

by Senyang Li, Jiahui Qian, Ming Xu, Jing Yang, Zhengming He, Tongjie Zhao, Junlong Zhao, Rui Fang The lumen of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is the subcellular site where secretory protein folding, glycosylation and sulfation of membrane-bound proteins, proteoglycans, and lipids occur. The protein folding and degradation in the lumen of the ER require high levels of energy in the form of ATP.

by Alanna M. Kelly, John M. Leech, Sarah L. Doyle, Rachel M. McLoughlin Staphylococcus aureus persistently colonises the anterior nares of a significant proportion of the healthy population, however the local immune response elicited during S. aureus nasal colonisation remains ill-defined. Local activation of IL-17/IL-22 producing T cells are critical for controlling bacterial clearance from the nasal cavity.

by Lindsey A. Shallberg, Anthony T. Phan, David A. Christian, Joseph A. Perry, Breanne E. Haskins, Daniel P. Beiting, Tajie H. Harris, Anita A. Koshy, Christopher A. Hunter

by Olaf Isken, Thomas Walther, Luis Wong-Dilworth, Dirk Rehders, Lars Redecke, Norbert Tautz

by Jiandong Chen, Hyuntae Byun, Qianxuan She, Zhi Liu, Karl-Gustav Ruggeberg, Qinqin Pu, I-Ji Jung, Dehao Zhu, Mary R. Brockett, Ansel Hsiao, Jun Zhu Vibrio cholerae is the etiologic agent of the severe human diarrheal disease cholera. To colonize mammalian hosts, this pathogen must defend against host-derived toxic compounds, such as nitric oxide (NO) and NO-derived reactive nitrogen species (RNS).

by Xupeng Hong, Yuka Imamura Kawasawa, Stephan Menne, Jianming Hu Hepatitis B virus (HBV) has a highly restricted host range and cell tropism. Other than the human sodium taurocholate cotransporting polypeptide (huNTCP), the HBV entry receptor, host determinants of HBV susceptibility are poorly understood. Woodchucks are naturally infected with woodchuck hepatitis virus (WHV), closely related to HBV, but not with HBV.

by Camilla Godlee, Ondrej Cerny, Mei Liu, Samkeliso Blundell, Alanna E. Gallagher, Meriam Shahin, David W. Holden SteD is a transmembrane effector of the Salmonella SPI-2 type III secretion system that inhibits T cell activation by reducing the amounts of at least three proteins–major histocompatibility complex II (MHCII), CD86 and CD97 –from the surface of antigen-presenting cells.

by Maren Rudolph, Alexander Carsten, Susanne Kulnik, Martin Aepfelbacher, Manuel Wolters Yersinia enterocolitica employs a type three secretion system (T3SS) to translocate immunosuppressive effector proteins into host cells. To this end, the T3SS assembles a translocon/pore complex composed of the translocator proteins YopB and YopD in host cell membranes serving as an entry port for the effectors.

by Hector S. Alvarez-Manzo, Robert K. Davidson, Jasper Van Cauwelaert de Wyels, Katherine L. Cotten, Benjamin Nguyen, Melody Xiao, Zeyu Zhu, Jon Anthony, Tim van Opijnen, Kimberly Michele Davis Antibiotic tolerance is typically associated with a phenotypic change within a bacterial population, resulting in a transient decrease in antibiotic susceptibility that can contribute to treatment failure and recurrent infections.

by My-Hang Huynh, Vern B. Carruthers The Toxoplasma gondii lytic cycle is a repetition of host cell invasion, replication, egress, and re-invasion into the next host cell. While the molecular players involved in egress have been studied in greater detail in recent years, the signals and pathways for triggering egress from the host cell have not been fully elucidated.

by Andrew J. Van Alst, Lucas M. Demey, Victor J. DiRita Vibrio cholerae respires both aerobically and anaerobically and, while oxygen may be available to it during infection, other terminal electron acceptors are proposed for population expansion during infection. Unlike gastrointestinal pathogens that stimulate significant inflammation leading to elevated levels of oxygen or alternative terminal electron acceptors, V.

by Jason R. Devlin, William Santus, Jorge Mendez, Wenjing Peng, Aiying Yu, Junyao Wang, Xiomarie Alejandro-Navarreto, Kaitlyn Kiernan, Manmeet Singh, Peilin Jiang, Yehia Mechref, Judith Behnsen Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium (S. Typhimurium) is one of the leading causes of food-borne illnesses worldwide. To colonize the gastrointestinal tract, S. Typhimurium produces multiple virulence factors that facilitate cellular invasion.

by Kasturi Chandra, Atish Roy Chowdhury, Ritika Chatterjee, Dipshikha Chakravortty Salmonella is a facultative intracellular pathogen that has co-evolved with its host and has also developed various strategies to evade the host immune responses. Salmonella recruits an array of virulence factors to escape from host defense mechanisms. Previously chitinase A (chiA) was found to be upregulated in intracellular Salmonella.

by William R. Hardin, Germain C. M. Alas, Nikita Taparia, Elizabeth B. Thomas, Melissa C. Steele-Ogus, Kelli L. Hvorecny, Aaron R. Halpern, Pavla Tůmová, Justin M. Kollman, Joshua C. Vaughan, Nathan J. Sniadecki, Alexander R. Paredez Attachment to the intestinal epithelium is critical to the lifestyle of the ubiquitous parasite Giardia lamblia. The ventrolateral flange is a sheet-like membrane protrusion at the interface between parasites and attached surfaces.

by Patricia Bartsch, Christoph Kilian, Malte Hellmig, Hans-Joachim Paust, Alina Borchers, Amirrtavarshni Sivayoganathan, Leon Enk, Yu Zhao, Nikhat Shaikh, Henning Büttner, Milagros N. Wong, Victor G. Puelles, Thorsten Wiech, Richard Flavell, Tobias B. Huber, Jan-Eric Turner, Stefan Bonn, Samuel Huber, Nicola Gagliani, Hans-Willi Mittrücker, Holger Rohde, Ulf Panzer, Christian F. Krebs

by Helit Cohen, Claire Hoede, Felix Scharte, Charles Coluzzi, Emiliano Cohen, Inna Shomer, Ludovic Mallet, Sébastien Holbert, Remy Felix Serre, Thomas Schiex, Isabelle Virlogeux-Payant, Guntram A.

by Yogavel Manickam, Nipun Malhotra, Siddhartha Mishra, Palak Babbar, Abhishek Dusane, Benoît Laleu, Valeria Bellini, Mohamed-Ali Hakimi, Alexandre Bougdour, Amit Sharma Toxoplasmosis is caused by Toxoplasma gondii and in immunocompromised patients, it may lead to seizures, encephalitis or death.