Interestingly at molecular level humans and chimpanzees are very similar. The average DNA sequence difference between them is ~4% (Varki and Altheide, 2009). Contributing to the difference in humans are human endogenous ...

Cryptococcus neoformans and C. gattii are pathogenic basidiomycetous yeasts and the commonest cause of fungal infection of the central nervous system. Cryptococci are typically haploid but several inter-species, inter-varietal ...

Hepatitis E virus genotype 3 (HEV-3) is the causal pathogen of chronic hepatitis E. We report here the full-length genome sequence of an HEV-3 strain, isolated from a kidney transplant recipient in Switzerland (SW/16-0282). ...

In its natural habitat, the soil bacterium Bacillus subtilis often has to cope with fluctuating osmolality and nutrient availability. Upon nutrient depletion it can form dormant spores, which can revive to form vegetative ...

In recent years genome-wide RNAi screens have revealed hundreds of cellular factors required for influenza virus infections in human cells. The long-term goal is to establish some of them as drug targets for the development ...

Background: The human genome harbors several largely preserved HERV-K(HML-2) elements. Although this retroviral family comes closest of all known HERVs to producing replication competent virions, mutations acquired during ...

Background: Current routine surveillance schemes for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in the United Kingdom (UK) are not designed for outbreak identification. Recognising STI outbreaks, therefore, depends almost ...

Invertebrate-derived DNA (iDNA) from terrestrial haematophagous leeches has recently been proposed as a powerful non-invasive tool with which to detect vertebrate species and thus to survey their populations. However, to ...

Background: The genus Mycobacterium (M.) comprises highly pathogenic bacteria such as M. tuberculosis as well as environmental opportunistic bacteria called non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM). While the incidence of ...