Background: Multidrug-resistant (MDR) enterococci have become a major problem in recent times and have been reported increasingly around the world. Lytic phages infect bacteria leading to rapid host death with limited risk of phage transduction, underlining the increasing interest in potential phage therapy in the future. Objective (s): The aim of this study is to use phage therapy as alternative approach for treatment of Enterococcus faecalis infections that recorded as MDR in Iraq to tackle this problem. Materials and Methods: Thirty E. faecalis isolates were collected from patients with different infectious diseases such as urinary tract infection (UTI), diabetic foot, septicemia, and wound infections. The isolation of specific lytic phages was from different environmental sources such as (sewage, and wastewater). The biokinetic assays were carried out to measure the characteristics of the isolated phage. The study of the bacteriophage and the formed phage cocktail infectivity against isolates E.faecalis was tested by the top layer assay. The phage endolysin was extracted from the best bacteriophage that gave best results. Results: All the isolated E.faecalis was reported as MDR in this study. About 75 E.faecalis specific phages were isolated and purified. All the isolated bacteria were 100% sensitive to the lytic phages. The formed phage cocktail was capable to create inhibition zones on the most bacterial isolates' lawns. The molecular weight and the concentration of the extracted endolysin was evaluated in this study and found to be as (48 kDa) and (0.5mg/ml), respectively. The antibacterial activity of the extracted endolysin was evaluated by the turbidity reduction assay. A clear decline in the bacterial growth was manifested (5x107 CFU/ml) to (1x104 CFU/ml), in which the bacterial growth was reduced by (3.63 log). The endolysin found to be effective against 90% of E.faeclais isolates. Conclusion: The activity of the isolated specific phage together with the activity of the formed phage cocktail, were efficient as successful and inexpensive method of therapy against MDR E.faecalis. The potential of the extracted endolysin over the phage therapy was verified in this study. The coverage rate and the absence of resistant E.faecalis to the phage and its endolysin had emphasized on the importance of this alternative therapy to commonly used antibiotics. List of abbreviation: MDR = multiple drug-resistant, E. faecalis = Enterococcus faecalis, BT = burst time, BS = burst size, IP = infective percentage, Phage =bacteriophage, CFU = Colony forming unit, kDa = Kilodalton, OD = Optical Densities.
Throughout Agriculture has mostly relied on the use of natural fertilizers throughout human history, which are compounds that increase the nitrogen levels in the soil. Modern agriculture was made possible by the introduction of synthetic fertilizers at the end of the 19th centuryproduction of agriculture. Their application enhanced crop yields and sparked an agricultural revolution unlike anything the world had ever seen.In the near future, synthetic fertilizers are anticipated to continue to have a significant impa ct on human life, both positively and negatively. They are frequently utilized for producing all t ypes of crops and are essential to plant growth. The significance of synthetic fertilizers is their ability to provide the soil w
... Show MoreIn this study, Zinc oxide nanostructures were synthesized via a hydrothermal method by using zinc nitrate hexahydrate and sodium hydroxide as a precursor. Three different annealing temperatures were used to study their effect on ZnO NSs properties. The synthesized nanostructure was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), Atomic force microscope (AFM), and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR). Their optical properties were studied by using UV -visible spectroscopy. The XRD analysis confirms that all ZnO nanostructures have the hexagonal wurtzite structure with average crystallite size within the range of (30.59 - 34
... Show MoreDifferent frequency distributions models were fitted to the monthly data of raw water Turbidity at water treatment plants (WTPs) along Tigris River in Baghdad. Eight water treatment plants in Baghdad were selected, with raw water turbidity data for the period (2008-2014). The frequency distribution models used in this study are the Normal, Log-normal, Weibull, Exponential and two parameters Gamma type. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used to evaluate the goodness of fit. The data for years (2008-2011) were used for building the models. The best fitted distributions were Log-Normal (LN) for Al-Karkh, Al-Wathbah, Al-Qadisiya, Al- Dawrah and, Al-Rashid WTPs. Gamma distribution fitted well for East Tigris and Al-Karamah WTPs. As for Al-
... Show MoreDifferent frequency distributions models were fitted to the monthly data of raw water Turbidity at water treatment plants (WTPs) along Tigris River in Baghdad. Eight water treatment plants in Baghdad were selected, with raw water turbidity data for the period (2008-2014). The frequency distribution models used in this study are the Normal, Log-normal, Weibull, Exponential and two parameters Gamma type. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used to evaluate the goodness of fit. The data for years (2008-2011) were used for building the models. The best fitted distributions were Log-Normal (LN) for Al-Karkh, Al-Wathbah, Al-Qadisiya, Al-Dawrah and, Al-Rashid WTPs. Gamma distribution fitted well for East Tigris and Al-Karamah
... Show MoreThis study concerns the role of activated carbon (AC) from palm raceme as a support material for the enhancement of lipase-catalyzed reactions in an aqueous solution, with deep eutectic solvent (DES) as a co-solvent. The effects of carbonization temperature, impregnation ratio, and carbonization time on lipase activity were studied. The activities of Amano lipase from Burkholderia cepacia (AML) and lipase from the porcine pancreas (PPL) were used to investigate the optimum conditions for AC preparation. The results showed that AC has more interaction with PPL and effectively provides greater enzymatic activity compared with AML. The optimum treatment conditions of AC samples that yield the highest enzymatic activity were 0.5 (NaOH (
... Show MoreRecognizing speech emotions is an important subject in pattern recognition. This work is about studying the effect of extracting the minimum possible number of features on the speech emotion recognition (SER) system. In this paper, three experiments performed to reach the best way that gives good accuracy. The first one extracting only three features: zero crossing rate (ZCR), mean, and standard deviation (SD) from emotional speech samples, the second one extracting only the first 12 Mel frequency cepstral coefficient (MFCC) features, and the last experiment applying feature fusion between the mentioned features. In all experiments, the features are classified using five types of classification techniques, which are the Random Forest (RF),
... Show MoreThe current study used extracts from the aloe vera (AV) plant and the hibiscus sabdariffa flower to make Ag-ZnO nanoparticles (NPs) and Ag-ZnO nanocomposites (NCs). Ag/ZnO NCs were compared to Ag NPs and ZnO NPs. They exhibited unique properties against bacteria and fungi that aren't present in either of the individual parts. The Ag-ZnO NCs from AV showed the best performance against E. coli, with an inhibition zone of up to 27 mm, compared to the other samples. The maximum absorbance peaks were observed at 431 nm and 410 nm for Ag NPs, at 374 nm and 377 nm for ZnO NPs and at 384 nm and 391 nm for Ag-ZnO NCs using AV leaf extract and hibiscus sabdariffa flower extract, respectively. Using field emission-scanning electron microscopes (FE-
... Show MoreBreast cancer is a disease in which cells in the breast grow out of control. CD200 is a cell surface glycoprotein expressed on many cells, it belongs to the immunoglobulin family (Ig) and have a great role in the regulation of inflammation in autoimmunity. CD200 is the ligand for CD200R1 receptor. To determine if serum level of CD200 and its receptor CD200R1 can be used as a diagnostic and prognostic marker in patients with breast cancer.This case control study was carried out at Oncology Teaching Hospital – Medical city in Baghdad. Six groups were enrolled, four groups were confirmed with breast cancer stage (I, II, III and IV), fifth group (benign) and sixth group was control (healthy individual). Serum is divided to me
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