Welcome to the Microbiology Information

Here we go again. Another outbreak of gastroenteritis has affected 47 people at a nursing home at South Morang, North of Melbourne.

The illness struck 30 residents and 17 staff at the San Carlo Home for the Aged. Although it is still early, the source of the illness remains unknown.

One of the victims, a 90-year-old man, has died, but the cause of death is not yet known as it could be of natural causes.

San Carlo Home spokesman Christian Peterson says family members were asked to stay away from the home over the weekend.

“The best way people can help is by staying away and letting the staff get on with the job of looking after the residents and helping prevent the spread further,” he said.

“At all times we’ll keep relatives, staff and the appropriate agencies informed, as we have done over the last few days.”

According research scientists, studies have found that certain yeasts can be used to detect explosives.

Biochemist, Dr Dhanasekaran and his team have isolated and developed a type of yeast that can “sniff out” dynamite. They knew that rats have a super sense of smell, so the team took the genetic building blocks from a rat’s nose and incorporated them into yeast. They then added a special ingredient to makes the yeast glow green when it detects a component of TNT.

This is the same principle used when scientist took a protein from jellyfish known to light up when stimulated. When combined with the rat, NASA cells and the yeast, they created a compound that can actually “smell” bomb components like TNT. The compound then “lights” up to signal the presence of explosives.

Dr Dhanasekaran wrote in “nature chemical biology,” the yeast can actually detect small amounts of the explosive in liquid. They are now further developing it as a remote air sniffer about the size of a portable PDA.

Dr Dhanasekaran says “You can leave it in the airport or you can leave it on a highway, and immediately, as soon as it comes, you can monitor it from far away,”

Researchers hope that with additional work, they’ll have yeast “lighting the way” to other hazardous agents such as toxic gases, dangerous fumes and so forth.

The scientists hope this airborne detector will eventually become so sensitive that it can detect explosives from up to three-hundred feet away.

Following an inquest into the deaths of 3 people from the Legionella bacteria, it may now become compulsory for results of cooling towers to be made available to health officials.

According to Canterbury’s medical officer of health, Alistair Humphrey who told an inquest looking into three deaths from legionella in winter 2005 says that New Zealand should adopt a compulsory regime on testing and reporting of legionnaire’s disease.

All 3 deaths were part of an outbreak of 19 cases clustered in the southwest of Christchurch, Dr Humphrey told Southland-Central Otago coroner Trevor Savage at the inquest, which is likely to last two days.

“It is appropriate that New Zealand moves to adopt a compulsory regime,” Dr Humphrey said. “It will in my view minimise the risk of another outbreak and will be likely to save lives.”

Attention has centred on the cooling tower at the Ravensdown plant in the suburb of Hornby as a possible source, and the company had lawyer Robert Osborne at today’s hearing.

He asked about gaps in the testing of cooling towers, and reporting of results under the present voluntary regime, and Dr Humphrey agreed it was possible that none of the cases came from the Ravensdown cooling tower.

But Dr Humphrey also said: “Our view is that there is no way you can say none of them came from that point source. Everything pointed to a cluster in the southwest of Christchurch around the plant we are talking about, with what we found to be genetically identical species of legionella.”

He agreed with Mr Osborne that the strain was the ubiquitous Christchurch type of the disease.

Inquiries by health officials during the outbreak turned up 141 cooling towers. Some of the owners or those leasing the buildings had not co-operated by testing and providing results and had to be visited by officials.

It meant there were gaps in the knowledge of what was happening during the April to August outbreak. When tests were done it was not known how many had already used biocide to kill organisms in the cooling systems — a call made by health officials to contain the outbreak.

The inquest is hearing evidence on the deaths of Ross Hern 56, Peter Jones, 48, and Valmai Finlayson, 87, who died of legionnaire’s disease at Christchurch Hospital.

Legionella species are widely found in lakes, rivers, groundwater and soil. The hearing was told it was “generally benign” until it was turned into a mist and spread. This could be through hot water systems, air cooling systems, cooling towers, water spraying devices, water sprinklers, demisters, and spa pools. An Auckland outbreak had been traced to a high pressure hose used in a boat washing operation.

When Ravensdown tested its tower in April, it was found to have a high level of 2400 colony-forming units of legionella. Biocide was used and a later test showed the level was down to 260 units.

Ravensdown provided its results to the health authorities.

Dr Humphrey suggested four changes were needed to tighten testing and reporting procedures for legionella, consistent with requirements in New South Wales, Victoria, and now being considered by South Australia.

He wants local bodies to maintain a register of cooling towers, evaporation condensers, and scrubbing towers. In the 2005 outbreak it took health officials about two weeks to gather information on all these installations from Christchurch City Council records.

He also wants compulsory testing by owners and operators, and compulsory disclosure of the results to local authorities and medical authorities.

He also wants a consistent testing regime between commercial and industrial properties.

Giving evidence this afternoon, a senior technical adviser to the Department of Building and Housing, Bruce Trevor Klein, told the coroner that since 2004 all new buildings with water cooling towers required a building compliance certificate.

Owners were required to test their systems regularly for bacterial organisms.

Cooling towers under the 2004 Act had to be sited away from building air conditioning intake systems.

Building owners must furnish annual documents showing the cooling towers had been tested monthly for legionella bacteria.

Legislation required owners or operators of cooling towers showing a level of legionella bacteria exceeding 1000 colony-forming units (cfus) should notify a medical officer of health within 48 hours.

Test results had to be retained for two years.

Questioned by Mr Savage, Mr Klein said his department would need to investigate whether it would support the mandatory reporting of all water cooler test results to health authorities.

He cautioned against Canterbury Medical Officer of Health Alister Humphrey’s earlier assertion that New Zealand should adopt Australia’s reporting system.

Mr Klein said he understood the Ministry of Health was investigating adopting a system that would require the mandatory reporting of high legionella bacterial counts.

As the law stood now, building owners, cooling tower operators and laboratories had no onus to make such reports available despite having to test regularly and retain results.

Questioned by Donna Blandford, niece of the late Mr Hern, Mr Klein said under the Building Act, cooling tower owners or operators faced fines of up to $200,000 for non-compliance.

He was unaware of any prosecutions.

Source

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned consumers about the risk of botulism food poisoning from Hot Dog Chilli Sauce Marketed under a Variety of Brand Names.

In particular are 10 ounce cans of Castleberry’s Hot Dog Chilli Sauce (UPC 3030000101), Austex Hot Dog Chilli Sauce (UPC 3030099533), and Kroger Hot Dog Chilli Sauce (UPC 1111083942) with “best by” dates from April 30, 2009 through May 22, 2009 due to possible contamination with clostridium botulinum.

Consumers who have any of these products or any foods made with these products should throw them away immediately. If the “best by” date is missing or unreadable consumers should throw the product out.

Two children in Texas and an Indiana couple who ate these products became seriously ill and have been hospitalized with the toxin.

Symptoms of botulism poisoning can begin from 6 hours to 2 weeks after eating food that contains the toxin. Symptoms may include double vision, blurred vision, drooping eyelids, slurred speech, difficulty swallowing, dry mouth, and muscle weakness that moves progressively down the body, affecting the shoulders first then descending to the upper arms, lower arms, thighs, calves, etc. Botulism poisoning can also cause paralysis of the breathing muscles which can result in death unless assistance with breathing (mechanical ventilation) is provided.

Individuals who show these symptoms and who may have recently eaten Castleberry’s Hot Dog Chilli Sauce, Austex Hot Dog Chilli Sauce, or Kroger Hot Dog Chilli Sauce should seek immediate medical attention.

All of the above products are manufactured by the Castleberry Food Company in Augusta, Georgia.

Castleberry has informed FDA that it is voluntarily recalling all of the potentially contaminated products and is cooperating with FDA, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the states’ active investigations into the cause of this contamination and scope of the products’ distribution.

Castleberry is also voluntarily recalling a number of products that are not under FDA’s regulatory authority.

For a list of these products, visit: www.castleberrys.com/news_productrecall.asp.

FDA will provide updates as more information becomes available. Consumers can call the FDA at 1-888-723-3366.

Castleberry recommends consumers with any questions or concerns about this recall should go to Castleberry’s website (www.castleberrys.com) or call Castleberry’s consumer hotline at 1-888-203-8446.

The list has also been expanding and can be found here

Generally potable waters are defined as water which is intended for human consumption.

This water can be used for drinking, washing or showering and in the manufacturing of food product and drinks. Above all, the water should be safe to use and pleasing to the nose, eye and taste with no suspended matter, harmful chemicals or pathogenic micro-organisms.

The safety of water as it relates to public health is determined by its physical appearance, and the chemical and microbiological content, of these, the microbiological quality is seen as the most important.

Contamination of drinking water by micro-organisms is usually attributed directly or indirectly by animal or human faeces. These organisms will include bacteria, viruses and protozoa and the diseases that they cause vary from very mild to severe, and in some cases fatal. Those with the greatest risk are the very young, the sick and the elderly.

To assess whether water has been contaminated, indicator micro-organisms are tested and the two most common type are faecal coliforms and E. coli). This group of bacteria are present in high numbers within the faeces of warm blooded animals and its presence in water is undesirable.

The presence of coliforms means that the water is probably contaminated by faecal matter. Coliforms should not be detected in potable waters and their presence poses a serious health concern.

Quality potable water (i.e. drinking water) is as a general rule should be readily available throughout developed countries from various water authorities who closely scrutinise and monitor their product to ensure that it is safe to the consumer.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the USDA have extended GRAS (Generally Recognised as Safe) Approval for LISTEXâ„¢ to all Food Products.

In the fight against Listeria, one of the most dangerous food pathogens, US food processing companies can now apply a novel yet natural tool: LISTEXâ„¢ bacteriophages. The FDA and USDA have approved this
product from The Netherlands as GRAS, based on extensive safety and efficacy data and organoleptics tests confirming that LISTEXâ„¢ is safe and has no impact on taste, smell, colour, and other physical properties of treated products.

Bacteriophages or phage are some of the most abundant micro-organisms on earth. Fresh water and seawater can contain as many as 1 billion phages per ml, while in fresh and processed meat and meat products, more than 100 million viable phages per gram are often present. Phages are harmless to humans, animals and plants, and target only bacterial cells. They are extremely specific in regard to the bacteria they recognize.

The LISTEXâ„¢ bacteriophages target only Listeria bacteria (leaving desirable bacteria in place), and are easy to apply in the environmental areas of the production processes or even within the process.

In October 2006 the FDA had already proclaimed GRAS for LISTEXâ„¢ against Listeria in cheese. The extension to all products susceptible to Listeria, opens the door for the meat and fish industry to apply LISTEXâ„¢.

Earlier this month, the Dutch designated inspection office SKAL confirmed the ‘organic’ status of LISTEX™ under EU law, as a result of which it can be used in the EU in regular and organic products.

EBI Food Safety’s CEO, Mark Offerhaus: “Food Safety now tops the agenda of US food processing companies and consumers, who are insisting on ‘green’ solutions, rather than chemicals. Natural bacteriophages prove to be a unique solution, where increased safety does not come at the expense of product characteristics. US food processors can now benefit from LISTEX™, like their European counterparts.”

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Listeriosis, the disease caused by Listeria monocytogenes, is one of the most severe food borne infections, with a mortality rate of 30%. It can take weeks after exposure before an infection becomes apparent. The US Food Safety and Inspection Service maintain a zero tolerance policy for the bacterium, which grows at refrigeration temperature and is omnipresent.

The first detailed images of an elusive drug that targets the outer wall of bacteria may provide scientists with enough new information to aid design of novel antibiotics. The drugs are much needed to treat deadly infections initiated by Staphylococcus aureus and other bacterial pathogens.

The research team, led by Natalie Strynadka, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) international research scholar at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, published its findings in the March 9, 2007, issue of the journal Science.

“This enzyme is an awesome target for antibiotics. We have a totally new understanding of how the enzyme works and how a very good animal antibiotic inhibits the enzyme”, Dr Strynadka said.

Penicillin and many newer antibiotics work by blocking a piece of the machinery bacteria use to construct their durable outer walls. Without these tough, protective coatings, bacteria die. The enzymatic machinery (known as PBP2) studied by Strynadka’s group has two main parts: One end assembles long sugar fibers; the other end stitches them together with bits of protein to form a sturdy inter-locking mesh shell.

Strynadka’s team has provided a long-awaited look at the portion of the enzyme used in the first step of the biochemical pathway that initiates assembly of the sugar coating. The second step is targeted by penicillin and has been well studied.

Although scientists have spent many years identifying bacterial components whose structural features might have weaknesses that can be exploited by antibiotics, progress in turning up bona fide drug targets has been slow. The cell wall enzymes in particular have tantalized scientists, Strynadka said. “The cell wall has all the hallmarks of a great drug target,” she explained. “It is essential to the survival of all bacteria. The enzymes that create the cell wall are unique to bacteria. And it is accessible; you don’t have to get the
antibiotics into the cell.”

In their structural studies, the researchers focused on Staphylococcus aureus, a notorious human pathogen. An epidemic strain of the bacteria known as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus is resistant to several common antibiotics, including penicillin and amoxicillin, and is a great cause for concern among hospital infectious disease staff.

Postdoctoral fellow Andrew Lovering, who is first author on the paper, hopes the group’s three-dimensional pictures of the sugar-building enzyme from S. aureus will accelerate the search for an effective weapon against the infamous super bug.

The images produced by Strynadka’s team show the enzyme frozen in place by a powerful antibiotic called moenomycin. Moenomycin has been used for decades in animal feed to promote livestock growth. Bacteria have shown very little evidence of resistance to this antibiotic so far, and scientists think related compounds may be promising candidates for use in humans.

“This enzyme is an awesome target for antibiotics,” said Strynadka. “We have a totally new understanding of how the enzyme works and how a very good animal antibiotic inhibits the enzyme.” Although moenomycin is poorly absorbed by the human body, the new understanding of exactly how it
interferes with bacterial enzyme function should help scientists design modified versions that are more suitable for use in people.

Understanding the structure of this enzyme should also speed up screening and design of new antibiotics, which are in constant demand as microbes continually evolve new ways to evade the drugs that researchers design to thwart them.

The time it takes for bacteria to develop resistance to new antibiotics has been as short as one year for penicillin V and as long as 30 years for vancomycin.

Researchers attempting to solve the structure of this enzyme have struggled to recreate its cellular environment in the laboratory. But after much tinkering with different combinations of detergent, ions, and chemical additives, Strynadka’s team was able to crystallize the enzyme so that it would diffract x-rays into a pattern that would ultimately reveal its natural structure. They then were able to repeat the feat to reveal the crystal structure of the enzyme combined with the animal antibiotic.

Their findings help reveal how the enzyme prepares to assemble the bacteria’s sugar-coating by plucking sugars from a fat-sugar package known as lipid II. The antibiotic, which is another kind of sugar-lipid, probably mimics the lipid II molecule by tucking into a fold in the enzyme and taking up the space needed to bind to lipid II, the researchers believe. “We would like to see the enzyme in a complex with its natural substrates as well as with inhibitors,” Lovering said.

In the meantime, scientists now have the details of its shape and key contact points between enzyme and
antibiotic. The enzyme structure is the first ever solved of a member of a family of enzymes that remove sugars from lipids and attach them to other sugars. This process is used in a wide range of biochemical reactions, including allergic responses and cell signaling in cancer.

Researchers from the University of Sheffield have received joint funding from the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to develop an innovative sensor to detect bacteria. The new method will use a polymer which will give a fluorescent signal when it encounters bacteria, allowing scientists to easily identify infected wounds much earlier than using conventional methodologies.

The new technology will be of immediate benefit to healthcare industries in general, as well as those involved in detecting infection in battlefield conditions and bacterial contamination, whether accidental or deliberate.

Currently identifying bacterial infection takes several days and requires swabbing and culturing of bacterial swabs as well as the use of specialist bacteriology laboratory facilities.

By combining polymers, which change shape when they encounter bacteria, and developing a light signal through fluorescence non radiative energy transfer (NRET), the researchers will be able to detect early stages of bacterial contamination.

Being developed by a multi-disciplinary team of researchers from the University’s Departments of Chemistry, Engineering Materials and the Dental School, the sensor will have widespread applications beyond the initial project.

Dr Steve Rimmer from the University’s Department of Chemistry, said: “The project is a great example of progress that can be achieved at the life sciences/physical sciences interface and we hope the project will deliver technology of real importance.”

The multi-disciplinary team will be led by Dr Steve Rimmer of the Department of Chemistry and consists of Dr Linda Swanson (Chemistry) Professor Sheila MacNeil (Engineering Materials) and Dr Ian Douglas (Clinical Dentistry).

The project received £670,000 funding jointly from the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory - an agency of the Ministry of Defence over three years and started in December 2006.

Pink slime at the surface of water trickling through an old mine in California is proving to be a haven for researchers in their quest to learn more about how bacterial communities co-exist in nature.

A letter published in Nature shows that it is possible to follow what micro-organisms are doing in their natural environment by identifying the range of proteins that they produce. The technique, utilized in a microbial community thriving in battery acid-like streams underground at Richmond Mine near Redding, California, combines recently developed ways to sequence microbial genes with methods to identify the range of proteins from specific microbial members.

Researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and UC Berkeley discovered that Leptosprillium group II bacteria in these streams are exchanging large blocks of genes. While scientists have seen extensive gene transfer in bacteria, this is the first observation of exchange of huge genomic blocks in a natural microbial community.

“Consequently, this provides important information about the conservation of genetic resources to enable life to survive and thrive,” said ORNL’s Bob Hettich, a co-author and member of the Chemical Sciences Division. “Ultimately, the basic knowledge gained from this research will lead to a greater understanding of genetic diversity in related organisms and should lead to developments in human health
and bioremediation.”

The combination of mass spectrometry support from ORNL researchers with extensive reconstruction of genomes from community genomic data at UC Berkeley was a key component to this work, said Jill Banfield, who led the project. Banfield, a professor in UC Berkeley’s Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, expects this to have far reaching implications.

“More important perhaps is the demonstration of our ability to simultaneously identify a large fraction of an organism’s proteins and to distinguish them from proteins derived from quite closely related organisms,” Banfield said. “This opens the way for detailed studies of how a wide range of microbial communities are structured and how they function.” Hettich agreed that today’s powerful molecular tools are playing a vital role in investigating the complexity of how bacterial consortia cooperate and compete in nature. In fact,
ORNL mass spectrometry provided the ability to resolve and differentiate peptides that differ by as little as one amino acid.

Nathan VerBerkmoes of the lab’s Chemical Sciences Division was instrumental in designing the experiments and acquiring the mass spectrometry data while Manesh Shah of the Biosciences Division provided the bioinformatics horsepower to sort through the massive datasets.

“A key aspect of this paper is the ability to get proteome information on organisms that do not directly have complete genome sequencing information,” VerBerkmoes said. “As a result we could study organisms related to those completely sequenced - such as the bacterial clades, or ‘cousins,’ that are likely to exist in natural environments”.

“This also might have implications into helping study human proteomics because not everyone’s individual genome will be sequenced.”

The pink microbial biofilm communities found in the mine runoff provide perfect research specimens because they have fewer organisms than most communities found in nature. The reason, Hettich noted, is that these environmental conditions - a low pH of 0.8 are way too extreme for most organisms to survive. A pH level of 7 is considered neutral and most proteins prefer pH levels between 5 and 7. In addition, the water from the mine often exceeds 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Because of their simpler makeup, the Banfield Laboratory established these communities as a model system in the mid 90s.

This latest publication builds upon research that was published in May 2005 by Science. In that paper, Banfield, Hettich and colleagues at ORNL describe the bacteria community that thrives in what amounts to sulphuric acid. Their work set the stage for the latest development because it provided the first large-scale proteome dataset for a real life microbial community with a limited number of members.

Of particular interest to DOE is how this effort relates to its Genomes to Life program, which is focused on identifying and characterizing the molecular machines of life. This study helps extend the initial studies of microbial isolates growth in carefully controlled laboratory settings to more real-world complicated microbial communities.

Funding for this project, which is in the second of five years, is provided by DOE’s Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research and by the National Science Foundation. UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE.