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The Invisible Army
Published in Norman Begg, The Remarkable Story of Vaccines, 2023
What really sets viruses apart from other microscopic invaders, however, is their ability to live inside the cells of another living being. In fact, their very existence depends on this, as they can only multiply when they are inside a cell. Some scientists don’t even think of them as living organisms (especially bacteriologists, who spend their lives studying bacteria and tend to consider them as rather superior organisms). Viruses (their name in Latin means poison) can exhibit extremely antisocial behaviour. They force the cells of their host to make copies of themselves, often killing the cell in the process. Many viruses are harmless; however, they are generally rather unwelcome house guests. Polio, measles, Ebola, the common cold and of course COVID-19 all belong to the virus club.
Certainty? Maybe, Maybe Not: 1950 to 2000
Published in John K. Crellin, A Social History of Medicines in the Twentieth Century, 2020
Although the history of antimicrobials133 starts well before the 1950s, even before the first investigations in 1935 on a sulfa medicine (Prontosil), the relative success of the latter, with demonstrations of its value for treating puerperal fever, opened the door to a new era.134 A flood of articles in medical journals soon showed its potential for treating life-threatening blood infections and chronic conditions (notably gonorrhea); public enthusiasm was raised.135 However, an article in a 1936 issue of The Practitioner hinted at caution when acknowledging that the "enthusiasm of this group of compounds in Germany and France is little short of astonishing." The article noted that a great deal of work will have to be done to investigate the mode of action and the chemical constitution associated with the maximum degree of activity. The whole field is one of the most fascinating that has been presented for some considerable time alike to the clinician, the chemist, and the bacteriologist.136
The Twentieth Century
Published in Arturo Castiglioni, A History of Medicine, 2019
Another highly characteristic tendency of this important period in the evolution of medicine is, on the one hand, the close organization of the medical profession in scientific societies and professional corporations, which are constantly growing in strength; and, on the other hand, the division into as many groups as there are specialties. Thus we see the hygienist, the anatomist, the bacteriologist, the medical statistician, and the public-health official, who practically never come in direct contact with patients throughout their careers, all with their special societies and journals. Along with this tendency, however, we see clinicians turning directly to the aid of the chemist and the pathologist when the case requires special investigation, or to other specialists when their intervention seems desirable. The ensemble of medical knowledge has become so vast, the techniques of the specialties so complex, and laboratory tests so difficult, the preparation of sera and vaccines so delicate and weighted with responsibility, the scope of certain specialties like radiology so vast, that the approach to medical practice is subdivided into a hundred different paths, many of which, although having numerous possibilities for communication, touch but rarely.
A successful history: probiotics and their potential as antimicrobials
Published in Expert Review of Anti-infective Therapy, 2019
Luigi Santacroce, Ioannis Alexandros Charitos, Lucrezia Bottalico
In Messina (Italy) Metchnikoff discovered the phagocytosis during experiments conducted on starfish larvae (the Messina experiment) [45,46]. Moreover in 1887, he observed that white blood cells isolated from the blood of various animals were attracted to specific bacteria. He discussed this case with Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Claus, professor of zoology at the University of Vienna, who proposed the term phagocyte for the cells surrounding and killing pathogens. His theory that certain white blood cells could be environmentally friendly and destroy harmful organisms such as bacteria was treated with skepticism by eminent scientists such as Louis Pasteur and Emil Adolf von Behring [42,45–47]. At that time, bacteriologists believed that white blood cells swallowed the pathogens and spread them across the body. His main supporter was Rudolf Ludwig Karl Virchow, who published his research at the Archives for Pathological Anatomy and Physiology. For this discovery Metchnikoff was awarded in 1908 with the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine together with Paul Ehrlich, in recognition of their work on immunity [42,44–46].
Advances, challenges and tools in characterizing bacterial serine, threonine and tyrosine kinases and phosphorylation target sites.
Published in Expert Review of Proteomics, 2019
Giovanni J. Pagano, Ryan J. Arsenault
It will also be necessary to explore the larger biological context for each of these target sites and the proteins and pathways they are a part of. Consideration should be given to the activating/inhibiting nature of the phosphorylation, the three-dimensional structure and the upstream and downstream pieces of the signaling pathway. Every one of these lines of research has its own challenges, but they can inform each other and provide new insights into bacterial phosphoproteomics when integrated together. High-throughput and low-throughput biochemistry or bioinformatics techniques will all be vital to this understanding, along with interdisciplinary collaborative efforts between researchers. Central to these collaboration efforts will be online databases that contain phosphosite data in a standard format that can be easily accessed by users. Several databases with these features were mentioned in the review, but a common weakness is the inability of scientists to add their own annotations and data to proteins of interest. Future iterations of these or other databases need to include avenues for community participation, in a manner accessible to people of all bioinformatics skill levels. As the continuing research of bacteriologists and biochemists on bacterial phosphorylation should be disseminated efficiently without the need for extensive bioinformatics training. Projects for genome annotation by a community already exist, so developing a similar pipeline for proteomic annotations is a feasible goal.
British Journal of Biomedical Science in 2019. What have we learned?
Published in British Journal of Biomedical Science, 2020
Bacteriologists will be interested in four papers. Dou and colleagues reported an advance in the detection of Klebsiella pneumoniae, using multiplex PCR towards an organism-specific gene – rcsA, and 23S rRNA [56]. Of 355 culture-positive isolates, the multiplex identified 349 (98.3%), whilst it also detected signal in 104 of 2399 (4.3%) supposedly culture-negative isolates. Bacteriocidin(s) produced by Lactobacillus casei can suppress enterohaemorrhagic E coli activity, although the mechanism is unclear. Mahdavi and Isazedeh co-cultured the two organisms, showing that the expression of the E coli virulence regulator hfq is downregulated, and this in turn results in reduced levels of a shiga toxin, potentially responsible for endothelial and other cell cytotoxicity [57]. The pathogenicity of Helicobacter pylori for gastric disease may be accounted for by certain cag and other genes, such as orf. These are localized in the cag pathogenicity island, which is linked to stomach ulcers and cancer [58]. Bakhti and colleagues used molecular genetics to show that cagH, cagL, and orf17 are linked (p = 0.046, p = 0.004, p = 0.01, respectively) to any upper intestinal ulceration, whilst cagG is linked to duodenal, not gastric, ulceration (p = 0.007) [59]. Pitt and colleagues gave us an update [60] on their pursuit of the antibiotic potential of snail mucus, reporting a number of proteins that inhibit the growth of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, the most promising being a 37.4 kDa molecule named Aspernin [61]. The next step in getting Aspernin to the hospital pharmacity is to determine its toxicity, first in cell lines, and then to determine biological activity in an animal model of infection, a pathway that may take a decade to complete.