Bacteriophages in Food Applications: From Foe to Friend.

Bacteriophages (phages) have traditionally been considered troublesome in food fermentations, as they are an important cause of starter-culture failure and trigger significant financial losses. In addition, from an evolutionary perspective, phages have contributed to the pathogenicity of many bacteria through transduction of virulence genes. In contrast, phages have played an important positive role in molecular biology. Moreover, these agents are increasingly being recognized as a potential solution to the detection and biocontrol of various undesirable bacteria, which cause either spoilage of food materials, decreased microbiological safety of foods, or infectious diseases in food animals and crops. The documented successful applications of phages and various phage-derived molecules are discussed in this review, as are many promising new uses that are currently under development.

Comparative genomics of Cp8viruses with special reference to Campylobacter phage vB_CjeM_los1, isolated from a slaughterhouse in Ireland.

Campylobacter phage vB_CjeM_Los1 was recently isolated from a slaughterhouse in the Republic of Ireland using the host Campylobacter jejuni subsp. jejuni PT14, and full-genome sequencing and annotation were performed. The genome was found to be 134,073 bp in length and to contain 169 predicted open reading frames. Transmission electron microscopy images of vB_CjeM_Los1 revealed that it belongs to the family Myoviridae, with tail fibres observed in both extended and folded conformations, as seen in T4. The genome size and morphology of vB_CjeM_Los1 suggest that it belongs to the genus Cp8virus, and seven other Campylobacter phages with similar size characteristics have also been fully sequenced. In this work, comparative studies were performed in relation to genomic rearrangements and conservation within each of the eight genomes. None of the eight genomes were found to have undergone internal rearrangements, and their sequences retained more than 98% identity with one another despite the widespread geographical distribution of each phage. Whole-genome phylogenetics were also performed, and clades were shown to be representative of the differing number of tRNAs present in each phage. This may be an indication of lineages within the genus, despite their striking homology.

Bacteriophage-based tools: recent advances and novel applications.

Bacteriophages (phages) are viruses that infect bacterial hosts, and since their discovery over a century ago they have been primarily exploited to control bacterial populations and to serve as tools in molecular biology. In this commentary, we highlight recent diverse advances in the field of phage research, going beyond bacterial control using whole phage, to areas including biocontrol using phage-derived enzybiotics, diagnostics, drug discovery, novel drug delivery systems and bionanotechnology.

Genome Sequence of Jumbo Phage vB_AbaM_ME3 of Acinetobacter baumanni.

Bacteriophage (phage) vB_AbaM_ME3 was previously isolated from wastewater effluent using the propagating host Acinetobacter baumannii DSM 30007. The full genome was sequenced, revealing it to be the largest Acinetobacter bacteriophage sequenced to date with a size of 234,900 bp and containing 326 open reading frames (ORFs).

Two Australian Fetuses: Frederic Wood Jones and the Work of an Anatomical Specimen.

A close analysis of two fetal specimens is used to explore of role of material specimens in anatomical practice of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the significance of Indigenous bodies in that era's quest for an understanding of human difference, and the postcolonial legacies of the global project of creating collections of human specimens.

The effect of dietary supplementation with spent cider yeast on the Swine distal gut microbiome.

BACKGROUND: There is an increasing need for alternatives to antibiotics for promoting animal health, given the increasing problems associated with antibiotic resistance. In this regard, we evaluated spent cider yeast as a potential probiotic for modifying the gut microbiota in weanling pigs using pyrosequencing of 16S rRNA gene libraries. METHODOLOGY AND PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Piglets aged 24-26 days were assigned to one of two study groups; control (n = 12) and treatment (n = 12). The control animals were fed with a basal diet and the treatment animals were fed with basal diet in combination with cider yeast supplement (500 ml cider yeast containing ∼7.6 log CFU/ml) for 21 days. Faecal samples were collected for 16s rRNA gene compositional analysis. 16S rRNA compositional sequencing analysis of the faecal samples collected from day 0 and day 21 revealed marked differences in microbial diversity at both the phylum and genus levels between the control and treatment groups. This analysis confirmed that levels of Salmonella and Escherichia were significantly decreased in the treatment group, compared with the control (P<0.001). This data suggest a positive influence of dietary supplementation with live cider yeast on the microbial diversity of the pig distal gut. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The effect of dietary cider yeast on porcine gut microbial communities was characterized for the first time using 16S rRNA gene compositional sequencing. Dietary cider yeast can potentially alter the gut microbiota, however such changes depend on their endogenous microbiota that causes a divergence in relative response to that given diet.

The time and place of nostalgia: re-situating a French disease.

The history of nostalgia as a clinical category has many highly specific national stories. This paper traces an aspect of this history, examining aspects of nostalgia's changing meanings in nineteenth-century France. Nostalgia was a disease triggered by displacement, which became medically and politically important after the French Revolution, when military surgeons encountered epidemics of nostalgia in the armed forces. Understood as a form of pathological homesickness, the category straddled environmental medicine and emerging ideas about insanity. The diagnosis became particularly important to Idéologue writers as a case study in regulating and redirecting the emotions, demonstrating the efficacy of their new "moral" treatments and an ability to generate patriotic attachment to the new nation state. Over the course of the century, nostalgia disintegrated as a medical condition reflecting a decline in environmental explanations for disease within medicine, and increasingly plastic meanings attached to nostalgic desire.

Parenteral antibiotics reduce bifidobacteria colonization and diversity in neonates.

We investigated the impact of parenteral antibiotic treatment in the early neonatal period on the evolution of bifidobacteria in the newborn. Nine babies treated with intravenous ampicillin/gentamicin in the first week of life and nine controls (no antibiotic treatment) were studied. Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis was used to investigate the composition of Bifidobacterium in stool samples taken at four and eight weeks. Bifidobacteria were detected in all control infants at both four and eight weeks, while only six of nine antibiotic-treated infants had detectable bifidobacteria at four weeks and eight of nine at eight weeks. Moreover, stool samples of controls showed greater diversity of Bifidobacterium spp. compared with antibiotic-treated infants. In conclusion, short-term parenteral antibiotic treatment of neonates causes a disturbance in the expected colonization pattern of bifidobacteria in the first months of life. Further studies are required to probiotic determine if supplementation is necessary in this patient group.

Cross channel infections: nostalgia, spleen and the construction of national character.

In the nineteenth century, both spleen and nostalgia were considered clinical categories, and each associated with the character of a nation. English medical commentators boasted of their compatriots' resistance to nostalgia, an often fatal form of homesickness, while the French in turn argued that the splenetic English were flocking to France to escape their own insalubrious climate. Behind such jingoistic claims were broader concerns, on both sides of the channel but particularly acute for the French, about the impact of modernity on subjectivity, the relation between home, homeland and empire, and the fitness of both nations to succeed in the modern age.

Generation of food-grade lactococcal starters which produce the lantibiotics lacticin 3147 and lacticin 481.

Transconjugant lactococcal starters which produce both lantibiotics lacticin 3147 and lacticin 481 were generated via conjugation of large bacteriocin-encoding plasmids. A representative of one of the resultant strains proved more effective at killing Lactobacillus fermentum and inhibiting the growth of Listeria monocytogenes LO28H than either of the single bacteriocin-producing parental strains, demonstrating the potential of these transconjugants as protection cultures for food safety applications.