The relationship between dairy cow hygiene and somatic cell count in milk

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Tannery sludge compost amendment rates on soil microbial biomass of two different soils

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Microbial Transformations of Aryltetralone and Aryltetralin Lignans by Cunninghamella echinulata and Beauveria bassiana

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Ileal and caecal microbial populations in broilers given specific essential oil blends and probiotics in two consecutive grow-outs

Specific essential oil (EO) blends and probiotics used as feed additives have been shown to promote healthy digestive microbials resulting in improved poultry production. Two consecutive experiments were conducted with broilers fed corn-soybean meal diets to determine comparative effects of feed additives on ileal and caecal microbial populations (MP). Ross 708 broilers were placed in 84 pens with previously used litter and treatments maintained in the same pens for both experiments. Eight treatment groups were fed diets containing: Bacitracin methylene disalicylate (BMD) as positive control (PC); no additives as negative control (NC); three probiotics: BC-30; BioPlus 2B (B2B); and Calsporin; and the essential oil blends Crina Poultry Plus (CPP) at 300 or 150 ppm in the first experiment; and CPP at 300 ppm and Crina Poultry AF at 100 ppm in experiment 2. Starter and grower diets contained the ionophore (Coban). Ileal and caecal samples were collected at 43 days of age from male broilers. The DNA of microbial populations was isolated from digesta samples and analysed by denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis to generate percentage similarity coefficients (%SC) from band pattern dendrograms. Differences were observed in ileal and caecal populations depending on treatment, respectively, and especially between experiments. Broilers fed diets with probiotics had very similar MP. The EO CPP at 300 ppm resulted in ilea! MP similar to those observed in chickens fed probiotics. We concluded that antibiotic treatment affected ileal, but no caecal MP. More pronounced changes in ileal and caecal MP were seen in broilers at 43 days of age following probiotic and essential oil treatments.

Biofilm microbial communities of denture stomatitis

Introduction: Denture stomatitis is a common lesion that affects denture wearers. Its multifactorial etiology seems to depend on a complex and poorly characterized biofilm. The purpose of this study was to assess the composition of the microbial biofilm obtained from complete denture wearers with and without denture stomatitis using culture-independent methods.Methods: Samples were collected from healthy denture wearers and from patients with denture stomatitis. Libraries comprising about 600 cloned 16S ribosomal DNA (rDNA) bacterial sequences and 192 cloned eukaryotic internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region sequences, obtained by polymerase chain reactions, were analyzed.Results: The partial 16S rDNA sequences revealed a total of 82 bacterial species identified in healthy subjects and patients with denture stomatitis. Twenty-seven bacterial species were detected in both biofilms, 29 species were exclusively present in patients with denture stomatitis, and 26 were found only in healthy subjects. Analysis of the ITS region revealed the presence of Candida sp. in both biofilms.Conclusion: The results revealed the extent of the microbial flora, suggesting the existence of distinct biofilms in healthy subjects and in patients with denture stomatitis.

Chemiluminescence as a PDT light source for microbial control

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Nest associates and colony trees of the red-rumped cacique (Cacicus Haemorrhous, Icteridae)

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Soil microbial biomass and organic matter fractions during transition from conventional to organic farming systems

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Microbial leakage of MTA, Portland cement, Sealapex and zinc oxide-eugenol as root-end filling materials

Objective: The aim of this study was to compare the microbial leakage of mineral trioxide aggregate (MTA), Portland cement (PC), Sealapex and zinc oxide-eugenol (ZOE) as root-end filling materials.Study design: An in vitro microbial leakage test (MLT) with a split chamber was used in this study. A mixture of facultative bacteria and one yeast (S. aureus + E. faecalis + P. aeruginosa + B. subtilis + C. albicans) was placed in the upper chamber and it could only reach the lower chamber containing Brain Heart Infusion broth by way of leakage through the root-end filling. Microbial leakage was observed daily for 60 days. Sixty maxillary anterior human teeth were randomly assigned to different groups - MTA and PC (gray and white), Sealapex + zinc oxide and ZOE, control groups and subgroups to evaluate the influence of EDTA for smear layer removal. These materials were further evaluated by an agar diffusion test (ADT) to verify their antimicrobial efficacy. Data were analyzed statistically by Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney test.Results: In the MLT, Sealapex + zinc oxide and ZOE did not show evidence of microbial leakage over the 60-day experimental period. The other materials showed leakage from the 15th day. The presence of smear layer influenced microbial leakage. Microbial inhibition zones were not observed in all samples tested by ADT.Conclusion: Sealapex + zinc oxide and ZOE did not show microbial leakage over the experimental period, whereas it was verified within 15 to 45 days in MTA and Portland cement.

Cloning and expression of the cDNA encoding rat granulocyte colony-stimulating factor

Granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) acts on precursor hematopoietic cells to control the production and maintenance of neutrophils. Recombinant G-CSF (re-G-CSF)is used clinically to treat patients with neutropenia and has greatly reduced the infection risk associated with bone marrow transplantation. Cyclic hematopoiesis, a stem cell defect characterized by severe recurrent neutropenia, occurs in man and grey collie dogs, and can be treated by administration of re-G-CSF. Availability of the rat G-CSF cDNA would benefit the use of rats as models of gene therapy for the treatment of cyclic hematopoiesis. In preliminary rat experiments, retroviral-mediated expression of canine G-CSF caused neutralizing antibody formation which precluded long-term increases in neutrophil counts. To overcome this problem we cloned the rat G-CSF cDNA from RNA isolated from skin fibroblasts. The rat G-CSF sequence shared a high degree of identity in both the coding and non-coding regions with both the murine G-CSF (85%) and human G-CSF (74%). The signal peptides of murine and human G-CSF both contained 30 amino acids (aa), whereas the deduced signal sequence for rat G-CSF possessed 21 aa. A retrovirus encoding the rat G-CSF cDNA synthesized bioactive G-CSF from transduced vascular smooth muscle cells.

Short communication: Resazurin reducing time as an indicator of Bradyrhizobium viable cell count

A method based on the use of resazurin (RSZ) is described to determine the number of viable Bradyrhizobium japonicum cells in culture medium. The observation of RSZ reduction can be done spectrophotometrically or visually. B. japonicum strains behaved differently when the reducing time was considered. This methodology can be used to determine the number of viable cells during the liquid culture stage of inoculant production.

A bacteriological study of hospital beds before and after disinfection with phenolic disinfectant

In hospitals, one of the ways to control microbial contamination is by disinfecting the furniture used by patients. This study's main objective was to evaluate the microbiological condition of hospital mattresses before and after such disinfection, in order to identify bacteria that are epidemiologically important in nosocomial infection, such as Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. RODAC plates with two different culture media were used to collect specimens. Patient beds were selected according to previously established criteria, and surface areas on the mattresses were chosen at random. From the total of 1 040 plate cultures from 52 mattresses, positive results were obtained from 500 of them (48.1%), 263 before disinfection and 237 after disinfection. Considering the selectivity of the culture media, the positivity rate was high. There were high prevalences of S. aureus both before and after mattress disinfection. The study results suggest that the usual disinfection procedures, instead of diminishing the number of microbes, merely displace them from one part of the mattress to another, and the number of microorganisms remains the same.