Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

All Outputs (13)

A paradox in bacterial pathogenesis: Activation of the local macrophage inflammasome is required for virulence of streptococcus uberis (2020)
Journal Article
Archer, N., Egan, S. A., Coffey, T. J., Emes, R. D., Addis, M. F., Ward, P. N., …Leigh, J. A. (2020). A paradox in bacterial pathogenesis: Activation of the local macrophage inflammasome is required for virulence of streptococcus uberis. Pathogens, 9(12), 1-23. https://doi.org/10.3390/pathogens9120997

© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Streptococcus uberis is a common cause of intramammary infection and mastitis in dairy cattle. Unlike other mammary pathogens, S. uberis evades detection by mammary epithelial cells, and the h... Read More about A paradox in bacterial pathogenesis: Activation of the local macrophage inflammasome is required for virulence of streptococcus uberis.

Complete genome sequence of Streptococcus agalactiae strain 01173, isolated from Kuwaiti wild fish (2020)
Journal Article
Santi, M., Egan, S. A., Leigh, J. A., Verner-Jeffreys, D. W., & Blanchard, A. M. (2020). Complete genome sequence of Streptococcus agalactiae strain 01173, isolated from Kuwaiti wild fish. Microbiology Resource Announcements, 9(36), https://doi.org/10.1128/MRA.00674-20

© 2020 Santi et al. Here, we report the complete genome of piscine Streptococcus agalactiae 01173 serotype Ia, which was generated using long-read sequencing technology. The bacteria were isolated from wild fish displaying signs of streptococcosis, f... Read More about Complete genome sequence of Streptococcus agalactiae strain 01173, isolated from Kuwaiti wild fish.

Bovine neonatal monocytes display phenotypic differences compared with adults after challenge with the infectious abortifacient agent Neospora caninum (2018)
Journal Article
Sharma, P., Hartley, C. S., Haque, M., Coffey, T. J., Egan, S. A., & Flynn, R. J. (2018). Bovine neonatal monocytes display phenotypic differences compared with adults after challenge with the infectious abortifacient agent Neospora caninum. Frontiers in Immunology, 9, Article 3011. https://doi.org/10.3389/fimmu.2018.03011

The neonatal period represents a window of susceptibility for ruminants given the abundance of infectious challenges in their environment. Maternal transfer of immunity does not occur in utero but post-parturition, however this does not compensate fo... Read More about Bovine neonatal monocytes display phenotypic differences compared with adults after challenge with the infectious abortifacient agent Neospora caninum.

Macrophage-derived IL-1? and TNF-? regulate arginine metabolism in neuroblastoma (2018)
Journal Article
Burchill, S. A., Ziegler, D. S., Etchevers, H. C., Norris, M. D., Cheng, P. N., McConville, C. M., …Mussai, F. (2019). Macrophage-derived IL-1β and TNF-α regulate arginine metabolism in neuroblastoma. Cancer Research, 79(3), 611-624. https://doi.org/10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-18-2139

© 2018 American Association for Cancer Research. Neuroblastoma is the most common childhood solid tumor, yet the prognosis for high-risk disease remains poor. We demonstrate here that arginase 2 (ARG2) drives neuroblastoma cell proliferation via regu... Read More about Macrophage-derived IL-1? and TNF-? regulate arginine metabolism in neuroblastoma.

Metabolic therapy with PEG-arginase induces a sustained complete remission in immunotherapy-resistant melanoma (2018)
Journal Article
De Santo, C., Cheng, P., Beggs, A., Egan, S., Bessudo, A., & Mussai, F. (2018). Metabolic therapy with PEG-arginase induces a sustained complete remission in immunotherapy-resistant melanoma. Journal of Hematology and Oncology, 11, Article 68. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13045-018-0612-6

Background Metastatic melanoma is an aggressive skin cancer with a poor prognosis. Current treatment strategies for high-stage melanoma are based around the use of immunotherapy with immune checkpoint inhibitors such as anti-PDL1 or anti-CTLA4 ant... Read More about Metabolic therapy with PEG-arginase induces a sustained complete remission in immunotherapy-resistant melanoma.

The bio-physics of condensation of divalent cations into the bacterial wall has implications for growth of Gram-positive bacteria (2016)
Journal Article
Rauch, C., Cherkaoui-Rbati, M., Egan, S. A., & Leigh, J. A. (2017). The bio-physics of condensation of divalent cations into the bacterial wall has implications for growth of Gram-positive bacteria. BBA - Biomembranes, 1859(2), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbamem.2016.12.002

Background: The anionic-polyelectrolyte nature of the wall of Gram-positive bacteria has long been suspected to be involved in homeostasis of essential cations and bacterial growth. A better understanding of the coupling between the biophysics and th... Read More about The bio-physics of condensation of divalent cations into the bacterial wall has implications for growth of Gram-positive bacteria.

PIMMS (Pragmatic Insertional Mutation Mapping System) laboratory methodology a readily accessible tool for identification of essential genes in Streptococcus (2016)
Journal Article
Blanchard, A. M., Egan, S. A., Emes, R. D., Warry, A., & Leigh, J. A. (2016). PIMMS (Pragmatic Insertional Mutation Mapping System) laboratory methodology a readily accessible tool for identification of essential genes in Streptococcus. Frontiers in Microbiology, 7(1645), https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2016.01645

The Pragmatic Insertional Mutation Mapping (PIMMS) laboratory protocol was developed alongside various bioinformatics packages (Blanchard et al., 2015) to enable detection of essential and conditionally essential genes in Streptococcus and related ba... Read More about PIMMS (Pragmatic Insertional Mutation Mapping System) laboratory methodology a readily accessible tool for identification of essential genes in Streptococcus.

Neuroblastoma arginase activity creates an immunosuppressive microenvironment that impairs autologous and engineered immunity (2015)
Journal Article
Mussai, F., Egan, S. A., Hunter, S., Webber, H., Fisher, J., Wheat, R., …De Santo, C. (2015). Neuroblastoma arginase activity creates an immunosuppressive microenvironment that impairs autologous and engineered immunity. Cancer Research, 75(15), https://doi.org/10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-14-3443

Neuroblastoma is the most common extra cranial solid tumour of childhood, and survival remains poor for patients with advanced disease. Novel immune therapies are currently in development, but clinical outcomes have not matched preclinical results. H... Read More about Neuroblastoma arginase activity creates an immunosuppressive microenvironment that impairs autologous and engineered immunity.

Virulence related sequences; insights provided by comparative genomics of Streptococcus uberis of differing virulence (2015)
Journal Article
Hossain, M., Emes, R., Coffey, T., Egan, S., Ward, P. N., Wilson, R., & Leigh, J. A. (2015). Virulence related sequences; insights provided by comparative genomics of Streptococcus uberis of differing virulence. BMC Genomics, 16, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-015-1512-6

Background Streptococcus uberis, a Gram-positive, catalase-negative member of the family Streptococcaceae is an important environmental pathogen responsible for a significant proportion of subclinical and clinical bovine intramammary infections. C... Read More about Virulence related sequences; insights provided by comparative genomics of Streptococcus uberis of differing virulence.

Transposon insertion mapping with PIMMS, Pragmatic Insertional Mutation Mapping System (2015)
Journal Article
Blanchard, A. M., Leigh, J. A., Egan, S. A., & Emes, R. D. (2015). Transposon insertion mapping with PIMMS, Pragmatic Insertional Mutation Mapping System. Frontiers in Genetics, 6, Article e139. https://doi.org/10.3389/fgene.2015.00139

The PIMMS (Pragmatic Insertional Mutation Mapping System) pipeline has beendeveloped for simple conditionally essential genome discovery experiments in bacteria.Capable of using raw sequence data files alongside a FASTA sequence of thereference genom... Read More about Transposon insertion mapping with PIMMS, Pragmatic Insertional Mutation Mapping System.

Arginine dependence of acute myeloid leukaemia blast proliferation: a novel therapeutic target (2015)
Journal Article
Mussai, F., Egan, S. A., Higginbotham-Jones, J., Perry, T., Beggs, A., Odintsova, E., …De Santo, C. (2015). Arginine dependence of acute myeloid leukaemia blast proliferation: a novel therapeutic target. Blood, 125(15), https://doi.org/10.1182/blood-2014-09-600643

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is one of the most common acute leukemias in adults and children, yet significant numbers of patients relapse and die of disease. In this study, we identify the dependence of AML blasts on arginine for proliferation. We s... Read More about Arginine dependence of acute myeloid leukaemia blast proliferation: a novel therapeutic target.

Vru (Sub0144) controls expression of proven and putative virulence determinants and alters the ability of Streptococcus uberis to cause disease in dairy cattle (2012)
Journal Article
Egan, S. A., Ward, P. N., Watson, M., Field, T. R., & Leigh, J. A. (in press). Vru (Sub0144) controls expression of proven and putative virulence determinants and alters the ability of Streptococcus uberis to cause disease in dairy cattle. Microbiology, 158, https://doi.org/10.1099/mic.0.055863-0

The regulation and control of gene expression in response to differing environmental stimuli is crucial for successful pathogen adaptation and persistence. The regulatory gene vru of Streptococcus uberis encodes a stand-alone response regulator with... Read More about Vru (Sub0144) controls expression of proven and putative virulence determinants and alters the ability of Streptococcus uberis to cause disease in dairy cattle.

Identification of sortase A (SrtA) substrates in Streptococcus uberis: evidence for an additional hexapeptide (LPXXXD) sorting motif (2009)
Journal Article
Egan, S. A., Kurian, D., Ward, P. N., Hunt, L., & Leigh, J. A. (2009). Identification of sortase A (SrtA) substrates in Streptococcus uberis: evidence for an additional hexapeptide (LPXXXD) sorting motif. Journal of Proteome Research, 9(2), https://doi.org/10.1021/pr901025w

Sortase (a transamidase) has been shown to be responsible for the covalent attachment of proteins to the bacterial cell wall. Anchoring is effected on secreted proteins containing a specific cell wall motif toward their C-terminus; that for sortase A... Read More about Identification of sortase A (SrtA) substrates in Streptococcus uberis: evidence for an additional hexapeptide (LPXXXD) sorting motif.