微生物学

Plasmodium falciparum is a unicellular eukaryotic parasite that causes malaria in humans. The parasite is spread by Anopheles mosquitoes after ingestion of sexual stage parasites known as gametocytes. Malaria transmission depends on parasites switching from the disease-causing asexual blood forms to male and female gametocytes. The current

Antimicrobial-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) causes over 200,000 deaths globally each year. Current assays of antimicrobial resistance require knowledge of the mutations that confer drug resistance or long periods of culture time to test growth under drug pressure. We present ODELAM (One-cell Doubling Evaluation of Living Arrays of

Lysogenic phages can integrate into their bacterial host’s genome, potentially transferring any genetic information they possess including virulence or resistance genes, and are therefore routinely excluded from therapeutic applications. Lysogenic behavior is typically seen in phages that create turbid plaques or possess subpar bactericidal

Next generations sequencing (NGS) has become an important tool in biomedical research. The Primer ID approach combined with the MiSeq platform overcomes the limitation of PCR errors and reveals the true sampling depth of population sequencing, making it an ideal tool to study mutagenic effects of potential broad-spectrum antivirals on RNA viruses.

Antibacterial coatings have currently gained great importance in biomedical technology investigations. Because of the spatial arrangement of the film coatings, evaluation of antibacterial activity presents a new challenge regarding traditional bacterial counting methods. In this protocol, four clinically relevant pathogens, Salmonella typhimurium,

The in vivo toxicity of new metallodrugs either as Small Bioactive Molecules (SBAMs) or Conjugates of Metals with Drugs (CoMeDs) or their hydrogels such as with hydroxyethyl-methacrylate (HEMA) (pHEMA@SBAMs or pHEMA@CoMeDs) are evaluated by the brine shrimp assay. Thus individuals of Artemia salina larvae are incubated in saline solutions with

Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus, an obligate predatory bacterium [i.e., bacteria that kill and feed on other bacteria (prey)], has the potential to be used as a probiotic for the disinfection of surfaces or for the treatment of bacterial infections. One option is to use this organism in combination with antimicrobials to potentiate the effectiveness of

This protocol details the construction of a simple, low-cost, small-scale, multiplex chemostat system designed for the continuous cultivation of microorganisms in suspension (i.e., bacteria, yeast, microalgae). The continuous culture device can operate at a working volume of 25 ml and allows the run of 8 chemostats in parallel by a single person.