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Category Archives: Microbiology

Dr. Allison Bayer: regulatory T cells – Video

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Dr. Allison Bayer: regulatory T cells
Allison Bayer, Ph.D., is Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology and the Diabetes Research Institute at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.Dr. Bayer #39;s research focuses on understanding the basic immunobiology of regulatory T cells and applying that knowledge for future clinical translational applications. She hopes that her work will lead to the design of novel therapies for a non-toxic approach to tolerance induction with the ultimate goal of achieving both self-tolerance and transplantation tolerance for the treatment of Type 1 diabetes patients.

By: Cure Diabetes

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Dr. Allison Bayer: regulatory T cells - Video

Food Safety Net Services (FSNS) welcomes Dr. Kendra Nightingale

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FSNS is pleased to welcome Dr. Kendra Nightingale as Scientific Advisor.

San Antonio, TX (PRWEB) February 19, 2013

Dr. Nightingale has a strong background in molecular microbiology and the overall goal of her work is to integrate basic and applied sciences to control foodborne pathogens through the use of combined sampling, testing and subtyping. Dr. Nightingale received her B.S. degree in Agriculture and M.S. degree in Food Science from Kansas State University and obtained her Ph.D. at Cornell University in Food Science with a concentration in Food Microbiology and minored in both Epidemiology and Microbiology. After completing her postdoctoral training at Cornell University, Dr. Nightingale joined the Department of Animal Sciences at Colorado State University, where she was on the faculty for five years prior to transferring to Texas Tech University in the fall of 2011 as an Associate Professor in the Department of Animal and Food Sciences. Dr Nightingale will continue to be an Associate Professor at Texas Tech while advising FSNS.

About Food Safety Net Services

Food Safety Net Services (FSNS) is a national network of ISO 17025 accredited testing laboratories open 24/7, 365 days a year. FSNS provides expert technical resources that assist companies with outsourced laboratory testing as well as implementing food safety and quality programs that deliver critical information needed to continually improve process controls. Additional services include specialized technical consulting capabilities and a full range of analytical chemistry testing.

Jeff Carpenter jeff.carpenter@fsns.com 210-240-5899 Email Information

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Food Safety Net Services (FSNS) welcomes Dr. Kendra Nightingale

Novel coronavirus well-adapted to humans, susceptible to immunotherapy

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Public release date: 19-Feb-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Jim Sliwa jsliwa@asmusa.org 202-942-9297 American Society for Microbiology

The new coronavirus that has emerged in the Middle East is well-adapted to infecting humans but could potentially be treated with immunotherapy, according to a study to be published on February 19 in mBio, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology. The study indicates that the virus HCoV-EMC can penetrate the lining of the passageways in the lung and evade the innate immune system as easily as a cold virus can, signs that HCoV-EMC is well-equipped for infecting human cells. The study also reveals that the virus is susceptible to treatment with interferons, components of the immune system that have been used successfully to treat other viral diseases, opening a possible mode of treatment in the event of a large-scale outbreak.

"Surprisingly, this coronavirus grows very efficiently on human epithelial cells," says co-author Volker Thiel of The Institute of Immunobiology at Kantonal Hospital in St. Gallen, Switzerland. Thiel says these new data indicate that although HCoV-EMC may have jumped from animals to humans very recently, it is just as well adapted to infecting the human respiratory tract as other, more familiar human coronaviruses, including the SARS virus and the common cold virus, HCoV-229E.

HCoV-EMC first came to light in June when it was isolated from a man in Saudi Arabia who died from a severe respiratory infection and kidney failure. Since that time, public health officials have identified an additional 10 infected persons, nine of whom had traveled in the Middle East and one who had recent contact with an infected person. The emergence of HCoV-EMC, which is related to the SARS virus, has raised concern that it may eventually lead to a pandemic much like the SARS pandemic of 2002-2003, which is estimated to have sickened over 8,000 people and killed 774 worldwide.

For the mBio study, Thiel and his colleagues tested how well HCoV-EMC could infect and multiply in the entryways to the human lung using cultured bronchial cells manipulated to mimic the airway lining. The lining of the lung, or epithelium, represents an important first barrier against respiratory viruses, but they apparently don't put up a big fight against HCoV-EMC, says Thiel. He and his colleagues found that human airway epithelial cells are highly susceptible to HCoV-EMC infection and that the virus is able to multiply at a faster initial rate than the SARS virus.

"The other thing we found is that the viruses [HCoV-EMC, SARS, and the common cold virus] are all similar in terms of host responses: they don't provoke a huge innate immune response," Thiel says. This is an indication that HCoV-EMC is already well adapted to the human host and that the virus uses that same strategy other coronaviruses use for evading the host's non-specific immune mechanisms.

The authors asked themselves whether boosting this weak immune response might diminish the virus' ability to infect airway epithelial cells. They found that pre-treating the cells with lambda-type interferons, proteins that are released by host cells in response to infection and enable communication between cells to mount an immune response, significantly reduced the number of infected cells. This is encouraging from a treatment standpoint, note the authors, since interferons have also shown a good deal of promise for treating SARS and another viral illness, Hepatitis C.

Thiel and co-author Ronald Dijkman emphasize that their work with HCoV-EMC would not have been possible without the efforts of many different research groups from Switzerland, Germany, The Netherlands, and Denmark.

Ongoing collaboration is crucial, they say. Future research to head off outbreaks of HCoV-EMC and other emerging diseases requires cooperation and trust among scientists and health agencies, a goal that is not always achieved. The future of this virus is uncertain, Thiel points out, but access to samples from a wider range of patients and epidemiological work could answer some fundamental questions, including where the virus is coming from and what the true prevalence of the virus is.

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Novel coronavirus well-adapted to humans, susceptible to immunotherapy

Hammond lab designated as innovation center

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HAMMOND |A Hammond laboratory has been designated a Siemens Microbiology Innovation Center and will serve as a reference site for other labs interested in what Siemens offers in microbiology testing.

Company officials from PCL Alverno, 2434 Interstate Plaza Drive, and Siemens joined lab workers in the microbiology area at Alverno for a ceremonial ribbon-cutting Tuesday morning. Alverno is a partnership of Franciscan Alliance and Presence Health.

At the heart of the innovation center are new equipment systems called Copan Walk-Away Specimen Processors, or WASPs, that will automate specimen processing at the lab.

Scientists at the lab process patient samples from 27 hospitals as well as clinics, doctor's offices and other medical facilities. They analyze about 2,000 plated cultures a day, said Jim Clark, microbiology department manager for Alverno.

The clinic offers more than 750 tests in clinical and anatomic pathology.

The automated WASP systems became operational on Monday, with the goal of increasing efficiency and accuracy, said Bernie Henry, vice president of human resources for Alverno.

Automating the process will cut the time it takes to identify what is making a person ill, he said.

It also will allow employees to spend their time on other, higher-value processes, said Annette Allaire, business manager for the U.S. Region of Siemens.

Alverno and Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics signed a multi-year expanded agreement, and Alverno became the first medical diagnostics lab in the country to offer Siemens' full range of advanced microbiology testing solutions, according to Siemens.

"We look forward to bringing other customers and prospects to this site in the future in order to showcase our broad, innovated microbiology portfolio and help them see how it directly benefits medical laboratories' operations and their efforts to deliver fast, accurate test results each and every time," Allaire said.

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Hammond lab designated as innovation center

Lambda To Lyse – Video

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Lambda To Lyse
This is a nerded out version of Alex Clare #39;s "Too Close". I #39;ve taken the bacteriophage Lambda #39;s decision to lyse or go lysogenic and put it to song. I am by no means a professional, and it probably sounds like crap, but I had fun coming up with and recoding the song. Cheers to Microbiology!

By: chatman88

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Lambda To Lyse - Video

Donohue elected president of American Society for Microbiology

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Timothy Donohue (left), professor of bacteriology and director of the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC), makes comments during a meeting at the Microbial Sciences Building in July, 2012.

Photo: Jeff Miller

Donohue will take up the post of president-elect on July 1, followed by a one-year term as ASM president beginning July 1, 2014.

The Society is the oldest and largest life science membership organization in the world, organizing meetings and workshops for more than 39,000 members. Its 12 journals publish nearly a quarter of all microbiology articles.

Director of the U.S. Department of Energy's Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, Donohue is an expert on the genetic pathways and networks that microbes use to grow, generate biomass, and harness and convert solar energy. His research goals include using computational models to design microbial machines with increased capacities to generate renewable energy, neutralize toxic compounds and synthesize biodegradable polymers.

Donohue is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and an executive committee member of the Wisconsin Energy Institute. He has served the ASM as chair of its Division on Genetics and Molecular Biology, and on the editorial board of the society's Journal of Bacteriology.

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Donohue elected president of American Society for Microbiology

Archaea swim using a unique motile structure. – Video

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Archaea swim using a unique motile structure.
Archaea, the third domain of life, use a unique rotating propeller to swim, called the archaellum. Although it functions like a bacterial flagellum, its structure resembles a bacterial Type IV pilus. The protein structure of the archaellum has been characterized for the first time by a team from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology. See newscenter.lbl.gov for more information.

By: BerkeleyLab

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Archaea swim using a unique motile structure. - Video

Contamination of Produce via Root Uptake-Kalmia E. Kniel, Ph.D. – Video

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Contamination of Produce via Root Uptake-Kalmia E. Kniel, Ph.D.
Unlikely Contamination of Produce Through Root Uptake with Dr. Kalmia E. Kniel-Tolbert Click: http://www.blogtalkradio.com Duration: 19 minutes, 42 seconds Unlikely Contamination of Produce Through Root Uptake with Dr. Kalmia E. Kniel-Tolbert Associate Professor, Microbial Food Safety, Assistant Chair, Department of Animal and Food Sciences, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Food and waterborne protozoa and viruses and use of non-thermal methods to inactivate these organisms on fresh produce. University of Delaware2002: Ph.D., Food Microbiology, Department of Food Science and Technology, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University , Blacksburg , VA, MS, BS Agenda: 1. Introduction. 2. What are foodborne pathogens? 3. How do foodborne pathogens contaminate food products? 4. Can fresh produce be contaminated via the roots into the product? 5. What does recent science suggest? 6. Which further research would enlighten producers and consumers? 7. Conclusion. Contact: Dr. Kalmia E. Kniel-Tolbert Associate Professor, Microbial Food Safety Assistant Chair, Department of Animal and Food Sciences College of Agriculture and Natural Resources University of Delaware 531 S College Ave, 044 Townsend Hall Newark, DE 19716 302-831-6513 kniel@udel.edu ag.udel.edu Listen to AME Food Testing Show podcasts: itunes.apple.com http://www.blogtalkradio.com Please join The Food Pathogen Outbreak/Recall Response Group at: http://www.linkedin.com

By: Andy Moreno

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Contamination of Produce via Root Uptake-Kalmia E. Kniel, Ph.D. - Video

Pharmaceutical Microbiology – mybiolumix.com – Video

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Pharmaceutical Microbiology - mybiolumix.com
http://www.mybiolumix.com - BioLumix offers innovative microbiological testing solutions designed specifically for the Pharmaceutical industry. We offer a comprehensive range of microbiological tests for raw materials, in process and finished products as well as environmental testing. We #39;re always available to answer any inquiries regarding the system specifications, installation, validation, performance, benefits and cost savings. If you would like to speak with one of our experienced microbiologists or engineers, please contact us directly: (734) 619-6095 or Visit: 3928 Varsity Dr. Ann Arbor, MI 48108 Phone: (734) 619-6095 Fax: 734-222-1830 Email: info@mybiolumix.com http://www.mybiolumix.com plus.google.com We are committed to delivering high value products, with a real technological difference, to satisfy our customer #39;s needs and help improve their quality assurance. We #39;re always available to answer any inquiries regarding the system specifications, installation, validation, performance, benefits and cost savings. If you would like to speak with one of our experienced microbiologists or engineers, please contact us directly: (734) 619-6095

By: BioLumix Microbiology

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Pharmaceutical Microbiology - mybiolumix.com - Video


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