In patient 2, follow-up MRI showed a reduction in lesions and loss of gadolinium enhancement (Figure 2). The timeline for clinical signs and therapy for both patients is shown in Figure

3. The two patients living in La Réunion reported herein showed all the symptoms of acute schistosomiasis. Although La Réunion is part of Africa, autochthonous amebiasis or schistosomiasis is indeed absent in the Island since decades. Our two cases presented cercarial dermatitis (swimmer’s itch) after a freshwater exposure in an endemic area (Middle-Western Madagascar) followed by a generalized inflammatory reaction (Katayama fever), characterized check details by eosinophilia, urticaria, and fever. In both the patients, this syndrome was accompanied by neurological

symptoms. Moreover, considering the absence of E histolytica infection in their usual resident place and the evidenced risky behavior for food-borne disease transmission during their journey, the diagnosis of concomitant intestinal and invasive amebiasis was attempted. On the other hand, the diagnosis of S mansoni infection was confirmed by serological tests and the positive stool examination. The latter result accounts for a quite advanced evolution in the course of acute larval invasive phase, as stool parasitology for Schistosoma eggs RO4929097 supplier is assumed not to contribute at this stage. Neuroschistosomiasis was diagnosed on the basis of clinical and radiological features. The involvement of the central nervous system (CNS) has rarely been reported during acute S mansoni schistosomiasis, and attention has been mainly focused on the pseudo-tumoral form of this infection.2 Acute invasive phase neurological complications should be distinguished from CNS involvement in

chronic schistosomiasis with erratic parasitic migration and schistosoma egg deposition in this tissue.3 When neurological symptoms appear concomitantly with Katayama fever, neuroschistosomiasis should be suspected and MRI should be performed. In the two patients, the mode of clinical presentation 4-Aminobutyrate aminotransferase with acute monophase inflammatory demyelinating disorder of the CNS and the MRI multifocal lesion patterns were consistent with the characteristics of the postinfectious ADEM syndrome.4 Besides, the condition should be differentiated from possible neurotoxicity linked to adverse effect of metronidazole therapy.5 However, both of our patients experienced first neurological signs such as insomnia before the initiation of metronidazole. Moreover, despite the discontinuation of metronidazole, the cerebral condition of our two patients worsened making this hypothesis less likely. Herein, Schistosoma infection was assumed as the triggering event to be associated with the ADEM presentation. In fact, no other usual triggering factors such as upper respiratory tract infection or pre-travel vaccination were evidenced.

Restricted DNA of each of the clones showed different singular signals with a digoxigenin-labelled transposon probe, suggesting different single-copy integration sites within the various clones (Fig. 2). To test whether transposon

integration is irreversible, we cultivated mutants in the absence of antibiotics for at least 40 generations. Five independent mutant clones were isolated. Cultures of these isolates were diluted 1 : 100 every third day, and after 21 days, Cabozantinib concentration samples were removed and plated on BCYE agar containing no antibiotics. Five single colonies were isolated for each mutant and the presence of the transposon was analysed by colony PCR using the primer pair Tnp FP01 and Tnp RP01. All of the tested clones contained the transposon, demonstrating a high level of transposon stability even in the absence of selective pressure. To express GFP in Afipia and to complement transposon mutants,

we developed a vector system based on pBBR1MCS2 (Kovach et al., 1995) containing a GFP-cassette for visual control of efficiency. Conditions for electroporation were one pulse at 2.2 kV in Eppendorf cuvettes with 0.1 cm diameter, resulting in up to 1.5 × 106 clones μg−1 plasmid. There was no enhancement of the transformation rate of A. felis with pBBR1MCS2-GFP using type I restriction inhibitor (data not shown). Stability of the vector in A. felis was tested as Selleck AZD6738 above for transposon stability, except that the primers used were MCS-2 FP01 und MCS-2 RP01. The 800-bp polymerization product used as confirmation of the presence of pBBR1MCS2 was observed in all tested clones (Fig. 3), indicating that the plasmid was stably maintained for at least 40 generations. In a second set of experiments, the stability of the vector pBBR1MCS2-GFP was tested microscopically. One week after transformation, >87% of the transformed A. felis colonies showed a clearly visible

GFP signal even when cultured in the absence of antibiotic pressure. Similar high stability of this type of plasmid has been observed for Brucella sp. (Elzer et al., 1995). Afipia birgiae (data not shown) and A. genospecies ifoxetine 2 (Fig. 3a) were also transformed using pBBR1MCS2-GFP at similar transformation rates. Afipia felis often possess a polar flagellum (Brenner et al., 1991) (Fig. 4a and c–e). A colony immunoblot screen of 2600 mutant clones for flagella mutants yielded seven potential clones that were not stained with the CSD11 antibody. We could identify flagellin as the antigen for CSD11, because an altered flagellin (mutant D5, this study) leads to a CSD11 Western blot band of reduced molecular weight (Fig. 4i). Additionally, immunofluorescence labelling with CSD11 resulted in signals only at the filament of the flagellum, which normally consists of flagellin exclusively (Fig. 4e).

Also, preliminary studies using 2.5 μg of A. castellanii-labeled cDNA hybridized to the E. coli O157:H7 microarray showed minimal reactivity to E. coli-specific

features (data not shown). This reduced the probability that low-level protozoa RNA contamination could introduce errors into our transcriptional analysis. Also, there was no indication from the Bioanalyzer results Roxadustat order that degraded RNAs from dead or dying bacteria were present in the RNA preparations. Statistical analysis indicated that 969 genes with an estimated fold change >1.3 demonstrated transcriptional differences with a P-value<0.018 and an estimated false discovery rate (FDR) of 1.9%. This represents 20% of the genes on the microarray and 17.5% of the genes in the genome and virulence plasmid. Significance and differences in transcript levels for all genes are depicted as a volcano plot seen in Fig. 2. Of the 969 genes differentially expressed, 655 genes were upregulated while 314 genes were downregulated. Differentially expressed genes involved in virulence

are listed in Table 2. Table 3 lists differentially expressed Fulvestrant manufacturer genes associated with antibiotic resistance, the SOS response, and iron acquisition/metabolism. These genes cover 21COGs, as shown in Fig. 3. All statistically significant genes with P<0.05 are listed in Supporting Information, Table S1. To validate the microarray studies, eight genes were chosen for qRT-PCR analysis, six upregulated Y-27632 2HCl and two downregulated. btuD was used for the control as it did not show differential expression in the microarray study. In every case, the qRT-PCR results corroborated the microarray results with respect to direction of differential expression, as shown in Fig. 4. The degree

of transcript difference measured by qRT-PCR was greater than that measured by microarray, as shown previously (Morey et al., 2006). Escherichia coli O157:H7 has adapted to two distinct habitats: the enteric environment of ruminants and the external environment, namely water, soil, and plant surfaces. It comes into contact with protozoa while in both the rumen and external water environments. During passage through the ruminant gastrointestinal tract, a series of environment shifts are encountered, including aerobe to anaerobiosis, protozoal uptake, rumen fluid, and large pH changes, to better prepare this pathogen for colonization of the lower gastrointestinal tract of cattle (Naylor et al., 2003). To better understand this path from a bacterial perspective, we sought to model individual segments starting with the uptake by protozoa. Ideally, this would involve isolation of protozoa from the rumen, but variability in the protozoa species populations, variability between animals, and the lack of protozoa free of internal bacterial, particularly E. coli, presents difficult problems in experimental design and interpretation of microarray data. Because E.

In Cameroon, about 5.5% of the population are infected with HIV; women and individuals aged between 15 and 49 years are most commonly infected [2]. There are two types of HIV: types 1 and 2.

HIV type 1 (HIV-1), which is found in Europe, the USA, Asia, Central Africa and East Africa, has been classified into three groups: major (M), outlier (O) and new (N). In group M there are at least 10 subtypes of HIV-1, designated KU-57788 nmr A to J. There is substantial recombination among these subtypes in Cameroon. HIV type 2 has been isolated only in West and Central Africa [3,4]. HIV-1 group O is essentially found in Central Africa [4]. In Cameroon, despite the efforts of the government to educate vulnerable groups, particularly young girls and women, and the distribution of free condoms, the prevalence of the disease

is still increasing. As in many other countries, HIV treatment in Cameroon is based PI3K inhibitor essentially on the administration of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs and the symptomatic treatment of opportunistic infections (OIs). Three types of ARV drug [nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs), nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs) and protease inhibitors (PIs)] are used in combination and are considered as treatment of reference or as standard treatment in children and adults. The tritherapies available in Cameroon, namely (i) two NRTIs+one PI and (ii) two

NRTIs+one NNRTI, have comparable efficacies [3]. About 30% of HIV-positive patients in Cameroon receive tritherapy. Globally, the introduction of this therapy has significantly improved patients’ health. However, adverse effects, for instance hypertriglyceridaemia and hypocholesterolaemia, have been found to be more frequent in patients on ARV therapy than in HIV-negative controls [5–7]. These effects are attributable principally to disturbances in lipid metabolism with complications affecting the cardiovascular system [8,9]. Insulin resistance, dyslipidaemia and clinical lipodystrophy during ARV therapy have also been reported [10–17]. In Cameroon, the evaluation of Racecadotril lipid parameters is not required during follow-up of HIV-infected patients. Thus, although disturbances in lipid metabolism have been found in HIV-infected patients, no study has yet been carried out to determine whether these disturbances are caused by the treatment or by other factors. Here we report a case–control study investigating the correlation between HIV infection and dyslipidaemia. All the 376 subjects that consulted in dermatology at the Yaounde University Teaching Hospital from December 2005 to May 2006, whether HIV-negative or HIV-positive, were enrolled in this study. However, only 344 subjects were eligible for inclusion, the remaining 32 individuals being excluded from the study (Table 1).

, 2008), TIGRFAM (Haft et al., 2003; Selengut et al., 2007) and COG (Tatusov et al., 1997, 2003) databases were also supplied. To visualize the annotation draft genome assembly of P. asymbiotica Kingscliff, we used the

‘gbrowse’ Generic Genome Browser. Despite the extensive redundancy in sequence coverage and the end-sequencing of large insert fosmid libraries for contig orientation and gap closure, none of the different sequencing technologies were sufficient to close the genome either alone or in combination. We will therefore discuss the different assembly programs, data and workflows and their resulting assembly statistics www.selleckchem.com/screening/pi3k-signaling-inhibitor-library.html (Table S1). The VCAKE assembly, used in Workflow A, had the longest N50 length and the longest individual contig; however, it also had the largest number of contigs and the lowest mean and median contig lengths, which can be explained by an abundance of short unassembled reads. We found 18 contigs in the VCAKE assembly that were longer than 100 kb, and 88.6% of the genome (assuming a genome size of 5 Mb)

was contained within these contigs. Workflows B and C generated assemblies with similar statistics; however, Workflow C, which combined both Solexa and 454 data, performed better than Workflow B, which used only Illumina reads. It is clear that using sequences from both the 454 and the Illumina platforms in a hybrid assembly produces longer contigs. This confirms previous findings of Reinhardt and SRT1720 research buy colleagues, who concluded that a hybrid assembly method was more successful and attributed this to the fact that combining the two sequencing technologies can compensate for the inherent

weaknesses from of each individual technology. Paired read information from fosmid sequencing was used to verify the assemblies. Although Workflow A generated the longest contigs, it was also found to contain the most misassembled sequence. Workflow B generated the least misassemblies; however, this was the most fragmented assembly. There were 69 regions in the Kingscliff draft genome that were absent from the ATCC43949 strain, representing 10.6% of the new sequence and 91 regions of the ATCC43949 genome that were absent from the Kingscliff strain, representing 15.8% of the genome. The predicted proteome of the P. asymbiotica Kingscliff draft was compared with the complete genome sequences of related strains and species using a protein vs. a translated nucleotide sequence blast search. Figure 1 presents a visualization of the tblastn comparison using the BLASTatlas genome comparison tool (Hallin et al., 2008). Photorhabdus have a number of virulence mechanisms, such as the ability to adhere, invade and cause damage to host cells. The genomes of Photorhabdus species contain genes that express adhesins, toxins and invasins, enabling the bacteria to infect host cells. Both strains of P. asymbiotica contain many genes that are considered to be important virulence factors.

It causes 20- to 50-fold resistance to the most available NNRTIs, which is sufficient to cause virological NVP-LDE225 solubility dmso failure [24,25]. It was not surprising to find a high

frequency of the K103N mutation because of the common use of NNRTIs in Honduras and the ability of the virus to develop NNRTI resistance mutations during monotherapy and during incomplete viral suppression [25]. Some limitations of our analysis should be mentioned. The patients were classified as failing their current cART based on virological, immunological, and/or clinical data; but some patients may incorrectly have been classified as failing their current regimen because access to laboratory monitoring is limited in Honduras. Furthermore, for logistical reasons (i.e. safe transport of high-quality samples to Sweden), only 42 resistance tests were performed using plasma samples and the remaining sequences were obtained from PBMCs. We compared the mutational resistance patterns in plasma and PBMCs for these 42 patients and observed a high concordance. Similar results have been shown

in other studies [26–28]. AZD1208 Thus, we feel that it is unlikely that our findings have been significantly affected by the fact that most resistance tests were carried out on PBMC DNA. Another potential limitation of our study is that it is difficult to precisely estimate the representativeness of our study population with regard Verteporfin molecular weight to all patients failing ART in Honduras because there is no reliable information about how many patients have successful vs. failing first- or second-line therapy. In conclusion, we have documented a high prevalence of resistance to antiretroviral drugs in this sample of antiretroviral-treated adult and paediatric HIV-infected patients in Honduras. Most of the treatment failures observed in these patients can be attributed to the previous use of mono and dual therapy and to limited and interrupted access to antiretroviral drugs in this country. Irregular access to CD4

and VL testing is an additional problem. Similarly, there is a need to establish access to routine resistance testing in Honduras, and this is one of the overall aims of the bilateral collaboration between Honduras and Sweden. In our study, virological failure was the strongest predictor of resistance. This suggests that plasma HIV RNA quantification may be clinically beneficial and cost effective through preventing unnecessary treatment changes. Thus, the management of these heavily treatment-experienced HIV-infected patients represents a considerable challenge for HIV clinicians in Honduras. There is an urgent need for improved and sustainable access to antiretroviral drugs, including boosted PIs, newly introduced NNRTIs, and entry and integrase inhibitors, as well as VL, CD4 and resistance testing. We thank all collaborators in this study.

So far, Paenibacillus species have been reported to produce multiple antimicrobial compounds with a broad inhibition spectrum to various bacteria and fungi. The main antimicrobial compounds produced by these species are peptide antibiotics, including polymyxins, jolipeptin, gavaserin, saltavalin, fusaricidin A–D and gatavalin (Li et

al., 2007). In this work, strain B69, a new bacterial isolate from soil, was found to display significant activity against fungi, and gram-positive and gram-negative Selleck RAD001 bacteria. Based on the 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis as well as physiological and biochemical characterization, strain B69 was identified as Paenibacillus elgii. This study focuses on the isolation, purification and structural elucidation of the antibiotics produced by this bacterium. Moreover, some biochemical properties of these antibiotics have also been investigated. Strain B69 was isolated from the soil samples collected from the Tianmu Mountain Atezolizumab manufacturer National Nature Reserve (Hangzhou, China). The tested bacteria and Candida albicans ATCC 10231 were kept in our lab, and the other five fungal strains were purchased from the China General Microbiological Culture Collection Center, which all belong to soil-borne pathogens (Table 1). The bacterial strains were routinely grown at 30 °C on

a nutrient agar or in a nutrient broth, with shaking (200 r.p.m.). The fungal strains were cultivated on a potato dextrose agar (PDA) at 26 °C. All the strains were stored in 20%

(v/v) glycerol at −80 °C for long-term storage. Strain B69 was observed by light microscopy to examine the morphological characteristics of cells and spores. Motility was determined using a sulfide-indole-motility medium. All the biochemical characteristics of strain B69 and the reference strain P. elgii SD17 were determined using the methods of Logan & Berkeley (1984). Growth at different temperatures (4, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 45, 50 °C) PtdIns(3,4)P2 and at different pH values (5.0, 5.6, 6.0, 7.0, 8.0, 8.5, 9.0) was tested using a nutrient broth. Tolerance to NaCl was measured in a nutrient broth supplemented with 1–10% (w/v) NaCl. All assays were performed in triplicate. For the determination of the 16S rRNA gene sequence, genomic DNA was extracted using the Bacterial Genomic DNA Miniprep Kit (Axygen). The 16S rRNA gene was amplified using two universal primers as described by Wu et al. (2007). PCR amplification and DNA sequencing were conducted using the method of Wen et al. (2009). The 16S rRNA gene sequence obtained was compared with the corresponding reference sequences retrieved from GenBank databases by blast search. The 16S rRNA gene sequence of strain B69 has been deposited in GenBank under the accession number GU321104. Strain B69 was grown in the fermentation medium (1% peptone, 0.3% sucrose, 0.3% soluble starch, 0.5% NaCl, pH 7.0–7.2) at 30 °C for 24 h.

In humans with bullous impetigo and staphylococcal scaled-skin syndrome, virulent strains of Staphylococcus aureus produce two serotypes of exfoliative toxins (ETs), ETA and ETB, which cause skin exfoliation when injected into neonatal selleckchem mice (Kondo et al., 1975; Nishifuji et al., 2008). The deduced amino acid sequences and crystallographic analyses of ETA and ETB revealed that they have the structure of glutamate-specific serine proteases containing a catalytic triad, and a putative active site comprising serine, histidine and aspartic acid (Dancer et

al., 1990; Vath et al., 1997, 1999; Papageorgiou et al., 2000). Moreover, ETD, another serotype of ET produced by S. aureus, has been isolated primarily from humans with deep pyoderma (Yamaguchi et al., 2002; Yamasaki et al., 2006). Recent studies revealed that these three isoforms of ET are serine proteases, whose catalytic serine selectively hydrolyzes

a single peptide bond in the extracellular domains of human and mouse desmoglein 1 (Dsg1), a desmosomal cell–cell adhesion molecule (Amagai et al., 2000, 2002; Hanakawa et al., 2002; Yamaguchi et al., 2002). In Staphylococcus hyicus, five isoforms of ETs (SHETB, ExhA, ExhB, ExhC and ExhD) have been reported, whose amino acid sequences are homologous to those of S. aureus ETs (Sato et al., 1999; Ahrens & Andresen, 2004). Among the five isoforms of S. hyicus ETs, the four Exh isoforms were primarily isolated from S. hyicus causing exudative epidermitis in pigs (Futagawa-Saito et al., 2007). These Exh isoforms were also reported to induce skin exfoliation in piglets, Selleckchem Dinaciclib selectively digesting the extracellular domains of swine Dsg1 (Fudaba et al., 2005; Nishifuji et al., 2005). Digestion of Dsg1 by ETs causes the disruption of cell–cell adhesion

Cobimetinib clinical trial of keratinocytes predominantly in the upper spinous and granular layers, wherein loss of the adhesive function of Dsg1 is not compensated for by other Dsg isoforms (Amagai, 1999; Stanley & Amagai, 2006; Nishifuji et al., 2008). Recently, an exfoliative toxin gene (exi) was identified in the chromosomal DNA of a strain of Staphylococcus pseudintermedius isolated from canine pyoderma. The deduced amino acid sequence of the exi gene product (EXI) was homologous to known ETs and caused intraepidermal splitting in mouse skin (Futagawa-Saito et al., 2009). In addition, our laboratory found recently that EXI selectively digests the extracellular domain of canine Dsg1 and causes intraepidermal splitting in canine skin (K. Iyori & K. Nishifuji, manuscript in preparation). However, it has not yet been revealed whether S. pseudintermedius strains harbor other ET encoding genes. During genome sequence analysis of a clinically isolated EXI-negative S. pseudintermedius strain, an orf showing significant similarity to ET genes was identified.

Woo et al. (2003) observed that tRNA genes in Penicillium mitochondrial genomes STI571 in vitro rarely encoded an intron, with the exception that one 15-bp intron was predicted in tRNA-Pro in P. marneffei; in P. digitatum, all mitochondrial tRNA genes were intron-free. In Penicillium and Aspergillus species, two distinct, 20-tRNA genes containing similar tRNA gene clusters were found that were flanked by cox3, rnl and cox1. It was interesting that the similarity of tRNA gene clusters was not associated with their phylogenetic relatedness, e.g. tRNA-His was located in the tRNA cluster flanked by rnl and cox1 in A. niger, A. tubingensis and P. marneffei,

but was located between cox1 and atp9 in P. digitatum (Fig. 2), showing the close relationship between

Aspergillus and Penicillium mitochondria and indicating that recombination events have occurred in P. digitatum. Both small subunit (rns) and large subunit rRNA (rnl) were identified in the P. digitatum mitochondrial genome, with a length of 1398 and 3592 bp, respectively. selleck chemicals The rns gene showed 98% and 86% identity to that in P. chrysogenum and P. marneffei, respectively. The rnl gene contained one group I intron with a length of 1670 bp, which encoded the protein RPS5. The same structure of rnl was also found in the mitochondrial genomes of P. chrysogenum and P. marneffei, as well as in Aspergillus species. This work was supported by the National Natural Foundation of Science of China (30571236 and 31071649) and the earmarked fund for

the Modern Agro-industry Technology Research System (MATRS). “
“Alkylating agents are widespread in the environment and also occur endogenously. They can be cytotoxic or mutagenic to the cells introducing alkylated bases to DNA or RNA. All organisms have evolved multiple DNA repair mechanisms to counteract the effects of DNA alkylation: the most cytotoxic lesion, N3-methyladenine (3meA), is excised by AlkA glycosylase initiating base excision repair (BER); toxic N1-methyladenine (1meA) and N3-methylcytosine (3meC), induced in DNA and RNA, are removed by AlkB dioxygenase; and mutagenic and cytotoxic O6-methylguanine (O6meG) is repaired by Ada methyltransferase. In Escherichia coli, Ada response involves the expression of four genes, ada, alkA, alkB, and aidB, encoding respective proteins Ada, AlkA, AlkB, Vitamin B12 and AidB. The Ada response is conserved among many bacterial species; however, it can be organized differently, with diverse substrate specificity of the particular proteins. Here, an overview of the organization of the Ada regulon and function of individual proteins is presented. We put special effort into the characterization of AlkB dioxygenases, their substrate specificity, and function in the repair of alkylation lesions in DNA/RNA. “
“Phosphatidylcholine, the major phospholipid in eukaryotes, is found in rhizobia and in many other bacteria interacting with eukaryotic hosts.

5% (w/v) unless indicated otherwise. The cultures were incubated under shaking at 30 °C, and growth was monitored every hour. For growth experiments on agar plates, cells were precultured as described previously and diluted to an OD600 nm of 0.5 in CGXII medium. From this, a twofold dilution series in CGXII was prepared and 2 μL of each dilution learn more spotted onto CGXII agar plates containing the appropriate carbon source. Agar plates were incubated for 24–48 h at 30 °C. For gene inactivation in C. glutamicum,

a vector integration method was used (Elleling & Reyes, 2005; Jolkver et al., 2009). To produce an insertion in cg2937, an c. 500 bp fragment of the target gene was amplified by PCR using the oligonucleotides 5′-ACTCGCCGCAATTTCCTCCG-3′ and 5′-CGAGGCGTTCGCTGATGATG-3′ and cloned into the pDRIVE vector (Qiagen), which was verified by PCR. Transformation into C. glutamicum was performed using electroporation (2.5 kV, 5 ms), and positive colonies were selected on kanamycin-containing agar plates, and chromosomal integration was confirmed by PCR using primers binding c. 100 bp before

the start codon (5′-GTCTGATGTCTGATGTATAT-3′) and the appropriate M13 primer for the pDRIVE vector (5′-AACAGCTATGACCATG-3′). Cells were precultured as described previously for the growth experiment unless annotated otherwise. Cells were washed three times in CGXII media containing no carbon source. Cells were diluted to an OD600 nm of 1 in CGXII media supplemented with 10 mM glucose and incubated check details on ice until the uptake assay was performed. Before the measurement, cells were incubated under stirring at 30 °C for energizing. The assay was started by adding 2 μM [14C] Neu5Ac. Every minute over 5 min, 100-μL samples were taken and cells were collected by rapid filtration (0.45 μm pore size; Millipore). Cells were washed with 5 mL CGXII medium, and the radioactivity retained on the filter discs was determined by liquid scintillation counting. The number of colony-forming units in each culture was also determined using serial dilutions onto BHI plates and incubation at 30 °C overnight

followed by counting. We identified orthologues of known sialic acid catabolism genes from E. coli using the ncbi blastp and identified similar sialic acid clusters across the Corynebacteriaciae using XBase (Chaudhuri et al., 2008) and the SEED (Overbeek et al., 2005). Clomifene To verify the initial phenotype array data, which suggested that C. glutamicum ATCC 13032 could grow on Neu5Ac (Holder et al., 2011), we grew the same strain on a minimal CGXII medium with 0.5 % Neu5Ac as the sole carbon source. No growth was observed in the absence of an added carbon source, but there was clear growth with Neu5Ac, albeit with a long lag phase compared with growth on glucose (Fig. 1a solid symbols). After 24 h growth, the final growth yield was very high with glucose, giving an OD600 nm of c. 17, while the value for Neu5Ac was c. 7.