BSC 431 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Antigen, Metalloproteinase, Plasmid

• School: University of Alabama
• Department: Biological Sciences
• Course: BSC 431
• Professor: Julie Olson

Document Summary

Bacillus (cid:1) (cid:1) (cid:1) (cid:1) (cid:1) (cid:1) (cid:1) (cid:1) (cid:1) (cid:1) (cid:1) Genus has over 200 species but few are considered human pathogens. 2 medically important species: bacillus anthracis, primarily a disease of herbivorous animals, one of the most feared agents of biological warfare, bacillus cereus, isolated from grains and other foods, can cause gastroenteritis. Appearance: gram stain: anthracis: cells have characteristic square ends, ellipsoidal spores; spores not seen in clinical specimens (cid:1) (cid:1) (cid:1, cereus: can"t easily detect spores. Bacillus species are easy to culture: cereus colonies are larger, more mucoid than b. anthracis (cid:1) (cid:1) (cid:1) (cid:1) Heat stable enterotoxin: emetic disease: short incubation: 1-6 hours. Heat labile enterotoxin: diarrheal form: longer incubation: 8-16 hours. Ocular infections can occur after penetrating eye injuries; results in loss of light perception w/in 48 hours; 3 toxins known (cid:1) Also can cause opportunistic infections of immunocompromised individuals (cid:1) Presence w/o disease often simply represents contamination of specimen (cid:1) (cid:1) (cid:1) (cid:1)