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Background The ability to measure and describe the microbiome has led to a surge in information about the gut microbiome and its role in health and disease. The relationship between nutrition and the gut microbiome is central, as the diet is a source of
Joy Dunkers, Hariharan K. Iyer, Brynna H. Jones, Charles Camp, Stephan J. Stranick, Nancy Lin
Quantifying viable, vegetative bacteria is a critical measurand in healthcare diagnostics, food safety, and antimicrobial development. Viability determination has traditionally relied on such techniques as plate counting, colorimetric or fluorescent
Assessing the reproducibility, accuracy and utility of massively parallel DNA sequencing platforms remains an ongoing challenge. Here the Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities (ABRF) Next-Generation Sequencing Study benchmarks the performance of
Yaw S. Obeng, Brian J. Nablo, Darwin Reyes-Hernandez, Dianne L. Poster, Michael T. Postek
Microwave (MW) sensing offers noninvasive, real-time detection of the electromagnetic properties of biological materials via the highly concentrated electromagnetic fields, for which advantages include wide bandwidth, small size, and cost-effective
Alejandro Cano, Hana Rozhonova, Arlin B. Stoltzfus, David McCandlish, Joshua Payne
Evolutionary adaptation can be conceived as a series of substitutions representing mutation-fixation events. The changes that are more likely will appear more frequently in the aggregate spectrum of adaptive substitutions. Recent studies establish that
Bryan A. Bartley, Jacob Beal, Jonathan R. Karr, Elizabeth Strychalski
Engineering an organism's entire genome enables large-scale changes in organization, function, and environmental interactions, with significant implications for industrial, medical, and environmental ap- plications broadly. Improvements to DNA synthesis
Prachi Kulkarni, Nathanael David Olson, Joseph N. Paulson, Emmanuel F. Mongodin, Mihai Pop, Amy R. Sapkota
The increasing use of reclaimed water for irrigation in areas that lack access to advanced wastewater treatment and reclaimed water distribution systems calls for an examination of irrigation-site-based treatment technologies that can improve the quality
Andrew Plymale, Jacqueline Wells, Carolyn Pearce, Colin Brislawn, Emily Graham, Tanya Cheeke, Jessica Allen, Sarah Fansler, Bruce Arey, Mark Bowden, Danielle Saunders, Vincent Danna, Kimberly Tyrrell, Jamie Weaver, Rolf Sjoblom, Rick L. Paul, John McCloy, Eva Hjarthner-Holdar, Mia Englund, Erik Ogenhall, David Peeler, Albert Kruger
A pre-Viking era vitrified hillfort, Broborg, provides a habitat analogue for disposed radioactive waste glass and shows strong niche partitioning among the organisms involved in glass alteration. Microbes cannot be eliminated from radioactive waste
Nathanael Olson, Senthil Kumar, Stephanie Hao, Winston Timp, Marc L. Salit, O Colin Stine, Hector Corrada Bravo
Background: There are a variety of bioinformatic pipelines and downstream analysis methods for analyzing 16S rRNA marker-gene surveys. However, appropriate assessment datasets and metrics are needed as there is limited guidance to decide between available
The communities of microorganisms living within and on us collectively constitute our microbiome. The microbiome has been linked to numerous health problems, such as autoimmune diseases, diabetes, cancer, and psychological disorders. We describe the
Joy Dunkers, Sandra M. Da Silva, Stephanie Servetas, James J. Filliben, Guilherme L. Pinheiro, Nancy Lin
Making reliable measurements of antimicrobial killing efficacy requires careful consideration of the sources of biological variability, measurement bias and error throughout the entire workflow. For ultraviolet-C (UV-C) disinfection, killing efficacy is
Brian J. Nablo, Darwin Reyes-Hernandez, Dianne L. Poster, Michael T. Postek, Yaw S. Obeng
Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) impose great burdens on public health, making HAIs the strongest contender as the most pressing healthcare problem in acute-care hospitalization. Ultraviolet-C illumination effectively decontaminate surfaces to
Aaron T. Smith, Richard O. Linkous, Nathan Max, Alexandrea E. Sestok, Veronika Szalai, Kelly N. Chacon
The acquisition of iron is essential to establishing virulence among most pathogens. Under acidic and/or anaerobic conditions, most bacteria utilize the widely-distributed ferrous iron (Fe2+) uptake (Feo) system to import metabolically-required iron. The
Erik M. Leith, William Brad O'Dell, Na Ke, Colleen McClung, Mehmet Berkmen, Christina Bergonzo, Robert G. Brinson, Zvi Kelman
Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) represent an important platform for the development of biotherapeutic products. While most mAbs are produced in mammalian cells, there are several examples of mAbs made in Escherichia coli, including therapeutic fragments. When
Kurt D. Benkstein, Sandra M. Da Silva, Nancy J. Lin, Dean C. Ripple
Online water bioburden analyzers (OWBAs) can provide real-time feedback on viable bacteria in high-purity water (HPW) systems for pharmaceutical manufacturers. To calibrate and validate OWBAs, which detect bacteria using scattered light and bacterial
Kehau A. Hagiwara, Francis E. Sakai-Kawada, Jonathan D. Awaya, Courtney G. Ip
The Prodiginine family consists of primarily red-pigmented tripyrrole secondary metabolites that was first characterized in the gram-negative bacterial species Serratia marcescens and demonstrates a wide array of biological activities and applications
Nancy Lin, Maria S. Ibrahim, Ahmed Ibrahim, Abdulrahman Balhaddad, Michael D. Weir, Franklin Tay, Thomas Oates, Hockin H. Xu, Mary A. Melo
Cariogenic oral biofilms are strongly linked to dental caries around dental sealants. Quaternary ammonium monomers copolymerized with dental resin systems have been increasingly explored for modulation of biofilm growth. Here, we investigated the effect of
Ella Mihailescu, Mirco Sorci, Jolita Seckute, Vitalii I. Silin, Janet Hammer, B. Scott Perrin, Jorge Hernandez, Nedzada Smajic, Akritee Shrestha, Kimberly Bogadardus, Alexander Greenwood, Riqiang Fu, Jack Blazyk, Richard W. Pastor, Linda Nicholson, Georges Belfort, Myriam Cotten
Piscidins are histidine-enriched antimicrobial peptides that interact with lipid bilayers as amphipathic alpha-helices. Their activity at acidic and basic pH in vivo makes them promising templates for biomedical applications. This study focuses on p1 and
Angela C. Stelson, Cynthia M. Hong, Mitchell C. Groenenboom, Charles A. Little, James C. Booth, Nathan D. Orloff, Robert G. Bergman, Kenneth N. Raymond, Kathleen A. Schwarz, F. D. Toste, Christian J. Long
MetaMetalorganic supramolecular cages can act as charged molecular containers that mediate reactions, mimic enzymatic catalysis, and selectively sequester chemicals.1,2 The hydration of these cages in solution plays a crucial role in their interactions
We developed the metagenomeFeatures R Bioconductor package along with annotation packages for three 16S rRNA databases (Greengenes, RDP and SILVA) to facilitate working with 16S rRNA databases and marker-gene survey feature data. The metagenomeFeatures
Prachi Kulkarni, Nathanael David Olson, Joseph N. Paulson, Mihai Pop, Cynthia Maddox, Emma Claye, Rachel E. Rosenberg Goldstein, Manan Sharma, Amy R. Sapkota
Reclaimed water use continues to expand across the United States, from areas that have access to advanced, potable-level treated reclaimed water, to areas that only have access to reclaimed water treated at conventional municipal wastewater treatment
Dianne L. Poster, Carl C. Miller, Yaw S. Obeng, Michael T. Postek, Troy E. Cowan, Richard A. Martinello
Nation-wide, healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) infect one in every 25 hospital patients, account for more than 100,000 deaths and increase medical costs by around $96-147B, each year. Ultraviolet-C (UV-C) antimicrobial devices are shown to reduce the
Megan H. Cleveland, Natalia Farkas, Kevin M. Kiesler, Blaza Toman, Peter M. Vallone
Standard Reference Material (SRM) 2365 is intended for use in the value assignment of BK virus deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) to BK DNA controls and standards. A unit of SRM 2365 consists of a well characterized, linearized plasmid, containing BK virus DNA
Wenjuan Zheng, Saiqi Zeng, Jacob LaManna, Harsh Bais, David L. Jacobson, Daniel S. Hussey, Yan Jin
Enhancement of plant drought stress tolerance by plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) has been increasingly documented in the literature. However, most studies to date have focused on PGPR-root/plant interactions; very little is known about PGPR's
The 2017 NIST/DHS/FDA Workshop: Standards for Pathogen Detection for Biosurveillance and Clinical Applications brought together subject matter experts from the clinical and biosurveillance communities to discuss standards to support the use of next