Peptide autoinducers of staphylococcal pathogenicity

超级风暴桑迪对纽约大学医学中心造成的毁灭性影响是由 整个医疗中心下层被洪水淹没，包括被 在15英尺深的水下。这不仅造成了电力，空气循环，自来水等的损失， 还有我们的IVIS成像摄像机被摧毁，以及我们所有的老鼠的损失，其中30只是 当时正在进行一项关于AIP对静脉注射后肾脏感染的影响的实验 接种强毒力葡萄球菌。 我们一直在使用带有荧光素酶报告标记的细菌来监测感染的命运 细菌在静脉输液系统中的成像。尽管我们的荧光素酶记者对皮下组织很好地工作 在随后的实验中，我们发现，我们的荧光素酶构建体没有 为检测肾脓肿中的细菌提供足够强的信号 在静脉接种葡萄球菌后，我们不得不使用其他参数，如重量 损失、发病率和死亡率来评估结果。因此，我们花了相当多的钱 开发具有更高荧光素酶活性或具有荧光蛋白的新记者的时间(E2- 红光和红外线)，它们被激发并在近红外线发射。较新的荧光素酶构建 在风暴发生时正在进行的实验中被使用。因为这些菌株 仍在接受测试，它们被暂时储存在冷藏室和零下20度的冰箱里的盘子里。 在风暴的后果中，在附带的申请中有更详细的描述 我们的另一笔赠款R01-AI22159的费用延期是这些冰柜断电和 冷室，导致所有这些临时文化的丧失，以及我们所有的AIP供应， 它们被储存在+4冰箱的溶液中，在供电期间温度达到50摄氏度 停电，导致AIP活性所必需的硫代内酯键的水解。

The devastating impact of Super Storm Sandy on the NYU Medical center was caused by the total flooding of the lower levels of the entire Medical Center, including the Smilow Vivarium, which was under 15’ of water. This caused not only the loss of electric power, air circulation, running water, etc., but also the destruction of our IVIS imaging camera and the loss of all of our mice, 30 of which were at that time being used for an experiment on the effect of the AIP on kidney infections following the IV inoculation of virulent staphylococci. We had been using bacteria tagged with a luciferase reporter to monitor the fate of the infecting bacteria by imaging in the IVIS. Although our luciferase reporters worked well for the subcutaneous infection model, we found, during a subsequent experiment that our luciferase constructs did not provide a sufficiently strong signal for the detection of bacteria in the kidney abscesses which develop following IV inoculation of staphylococci and so we had to use other parameters, such as weight loss, morbidity, and mortality to evaluate the results. Consequently, we spent a considerable amount of time developing new reporters with higher luciferase activities or with fluorescent proteins (E2- crimson and iRFP) that are excited and emit in the near infra-red. The newer luciferase constructs were being used in the experiment that was in progress at the time of the storm. Since these strains were still being tested, they were stored temporarily on plates in the cold room and in a -20 freezer. Among the consequences of the storm, described in more detail in the accompanying application for a for-cost extension of our other grant, R01-AI22159, were the loss of power for these freezers and the cold room, resulting in the loss of all these temporary cultures, and in our entire supply of AIP’s, which were stored in solution in a +4 refrigerator, whose temperature reached 50C during the power outage, causing hydrolysis of the thiolactone bond essential for AIP activity.