IHMT

Instituto de Higiene e Medicina Tropical

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2015

Overview and challenges of molecular technologies in the veterinary microbiology laboratory

Terrestrial, aquatic, and aerial animals, either domestic or wild, humans, and plants all face similar health threats caused by infectious agents. Multifaceted anthropic pressure caused by an increasingly growing and resource-demanding human population has affected biodiversity at all scales, from the DNA molecule to the pathogen, to the ecosystem level, leading to species declines and extinctions and, also, to host-pathogen coevolution processes.
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Nested and Multiplex Real-Time PCR Using Dual-Labeled Probes: Detecting and Discriminating Mycobacterium tuberculosis Complex Members in Cultures and Animal Tissues

Members of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTC) are causative agents of tuberculosis (TB) in both humans and animals. In the last two decades, the accumulating knowledge of the nucleotide sequences of several genes, and of the whole genomes, of MTC members has allowed the development of novel molecular assays able to detect and discriminate between these species.
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Rapid determination of anti-tuberculosis drug resistance from whole-genome sequences

Mycobacterium tuberculosis drug resistance (DR) challenges effective tuberculosis disease control. Current molecular tests examine limited numbers of mutations, and although whole genome sequencing approaches could fully characterise DR, data complexity has restricted their clinical application.
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Enhancement of antibiotic activity by efflux inhibitors against multidrug resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis clinical isolates from Brazil

Drug resistant tuberculosis continues to increase and new approaches for its treatment are necessary. The identification of M. tuberculosis clinical isolates presenting efflux as part of their resistant phenotype has a major impact in tuberculosis treatment. In this work, we used a checkerboard procedure combined with the tetrazolium microplate-based assay (TEMA) to study single combinations between antituberculosis drugs and efflux inhibitors (EIs) against multidrug resistant M. tuberculosis clinical isolates using the fully susceptible strain H37Rv as reference.
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Hemisynthetic trifluralin analogues incorporated in liposomes for the treatment of leishmanial infections

Leishmaniasis, a vector-borne parasitic disease caused by Leishmania protozoa, is one of the most neglected tropical diseases in terms of drug discovery and development. Current treatment is based on a limited number of chemotherapeutic agents all of which present either/or resistance issues, severe toxicities and adverse reactions associated with extended treatment regimens, and high cost of therapy.
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Negeviruses found in multiple species of mosquitoes from southern Portugal: Isolation, genetic diversity, and replication in insect cell culture

In this report, an RT-PCR approach based on the use of degenerate primers allowed the identification of negeviruses in four different species of mosquitoes (Ochlerotatus caspius, Culex pipiens, Cx. theileri and Cx. univittatus) collected in southern Portugal. The genomes of two of these viruses, sequenced to full completion, were shown to encode all the proteins encoded by previously described negeviruses
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