Endogenous Endophthalmitis in COVID-19 Patients

Intrinsic endophthalmitis is indeed behavior that causes eye disease that spreads into the bloodstream from a distant primary site. The intraocular disease caused by hematogenous microbial proliferation is known as indigenous endophthalmitis. Extrinsic and intrinsic endophthalmitis are the two types of endophthalmitis that exist. The presence of an external point of entry is linked to extrinsic endophthalmitis. Intrinsic endophthalmitis is a kind of septicemia caused by a blood-borne infection. Endophthalmitis is a disease of all the inner coating of the eyeball except the sclera and cornea, which is accompanied by substantial, increasing vitreous swelling. Endophthalmitis is a severe ocular crisis with severe visual and general consequences. An exterior injury of the entrance, such as injury, operation, or an inflamed cornea, is the most prevalent route of entry for potential pathogens. Endophthalmitis has a complex etiology, with many pathogenic species and substantial regional heterogeneity. The treatment of endophthalmitis has evolved dramatically during the last century. Endophthalmitis induced by direct inoculation dissemination of pathogenic microbes is a rare occurrence that occurs most commonly in sick or disadvantaged people. Intravenous medication usage, diabetes mellitus, immunological impairment, cancer, prolonged hospitalization, or systemic antibiotic therapy have all been linked to a 0.04 percent incidence rate. Haden described metastatic endophthalmitis in a seriously sick patient with pneumococcal cerebrospinal encephalopathy treated with intravenously anti-meningococcal serum in the 1918 volume of the Journal Ophthalmology. Endogenous endophthalmitis, unlike extrinsic endophthalmitis, needs comprehensive systemic antibiotic treatment. In indigenous endophthalmitis, the illness originates not in the eye but elsewhere in the body. As a result, it is necessary to obtain comprehensive cultures. Patients are sometimes unable to carry out their functions in society or household. As a rest, the person cannot cope financially and socially in his environment. Many social and influential factors are disturbed, and the patients are often depressed. Cosmetically the surgeries are not satisfying. Artificial prosthetics can be used, but they're seldom of minimum functional importance. Such interventions can be helpful for the patient. The focus should be made to deliberately save the patients and not just the cosmetic value of the surgery. Persons with chronic endophthalmitis had more excellent eyesight than people with symptomatic or subacute endophthalmitis. Improvements in eyesight were observed in individuals with persistent or subacute keratitis several months after the surgery more frequently than in people with symptomatic endophthalmitis. Nevertheless, in 40 percent of the overall all instances with an abrupt start, there have been no improvements or even decrease in visual acuity.

Influence of pulsing and wet cold storage on the vase water microbial profiles and overall quality of cut gladioli

Occlusion of the stem vasculature by microorganisms that proliferate in the vase water, or the plant vessels, leads to water stress symptoms that reduce postharvest quality of cut flowers. This study aimed to determine the effects of pulsing and wet-cold storage on the microbial profiles in cut Gladiolus grandiflorus L. cv. Fado. Pulsing treatments of 600-ppm 8-hydroxyquinoline sulfate plus 5% sucrose solution versus distilled water were administered before wet cold storage periods of 0-5 days in cut Gladiolus, previously grown from corms under open field. A two-by-six factorial experiment embedded in a completely randomized design with four replicates was accomplished. Proc GLM in two-way Anova was adopted, and the means were separated using Tukey’s test at a 5% level of significance. The pulsing treatment of 600 ppm 8-HQS plus 5% sucrose, the wet cold storage duration and their interactive effects significantly (P˂0.0209; ˂0.0001 and ˂0.0001 respectively) affected the means of the colony-forming units in the vase water of cut Gladiolus at senescence. The prolonged vase life of cut gladioli spikes was associated with decreased microbial proliferation as influenced by pulsing and wet storage duration of up to 4 days. Data generated from this study will improve existing technologies related to the quality and market value of this Gladiolus cultivar.

The Deep Rocky Biosphere: New Geomicrobiological Insights and Prospects

Rocks that react with liquid water are widespread but spatiotemporally limited throughout the solar system, except for Earth. Rock-forming minerals with high iron content and accessory minerals with high amounts of radioactive elements are essential to support rock-hosted microbial life by supplying organics, molecular hydrogen, and/or oxidants. Recent technological advances have broadened our understanding of the rocky biosphere, where microbial inhabitation appears to be difficult without nutrient and energy inputs from minerals. In particular, microbial proliferation in igneous rock basements has been revealed using innovative geomicrobiological techniques. These recent findings have dramatically changed our perspective on the nature and the extent of microbial life in the rocky biosphere, microbial interactions with minerals, and the influence of external factors on habitability. This study aimed to gather information from scientific and/or technological innovations, such as omics-based and single-cell level characterizations, targeting deep rocky habitats of organisms with minimal dependence on photosynthesis. By synthesizing pieces of rock-hosted life, we can explore the evo-phylogeny and ecophysiology of microbial life on Earth and the life’s potential on other planetary bodies.

Potential application of essential oil of Lavandulastoechas in poultry meat during refrigerated storage

The inhibitory effects of essential oil (EO) on bacteria development give them an important role in the fields of the food industry as an additive in food packaging. This study was aimed to identify the effect of Lavandula stoechas EO at different concentrations on chicken fillets quality during refrigerated storage. Antimicrobial and antioxidant activities showed that EO extracted has an important antibacterial activity and antiradical potential. In chicken fillets, the lavender EO (100 and 200 ppm) reduced their oxidation and microbial proliferation during refrigerated storage and with no cytotoxicity effect towards murine macrophage cells. During the storage period, the values of pH, dry matter, acidity and cooking loss of treated fillets were lower than that of the control. The statistical analyses proved greatly significant variations of color between the control and the treated by LEO, during storage. The sensory analysis selected an improvement effect in the organoleptic quality of the chicken meat when it was supplemented by 100 ppm of LEO. The statistical analysis of the microbiological characteristics clearly discriminated the control and those treated with LEO (p<0.05). The effectiveness of LEO was proved by its incorporation as a natural food preservative and the improvement of the shelf life of poultry meat products by about 3 days.

Culture Enrichment Combined With Long-Read Sequencing Facilitates Genomic Understanding of Hadal Sediment Microbes

Culture enrichment was developed to discover the uncharted microbial species in the environmental microbiota. Yet this strategy has not been widely used to study microbes of deep-sea environments. Here, we report the cultivation and metagenomic analysis of oceanic sediment microbiota collected from 6,477 m deep in the Mariana Trench. The sediment samples were cultured anaerobically in the laboratory for 4 months, before being subjected to full-length 16S rRNA gene sequencing using the PacBio technique and metagenome sequencing using both the Illumina and Oxford Nanopore techniques. The 16S rRNA gene analyses revealed 437 operational taxonomic units specific to the cultured microbes, despite the lower diversity of the cultured microbiota in comparison with the original. Metagenome analyses revealed the prevalence of functions related to respiration, energy production, and stress response in the cultured microbes, suggesting these functions may contribute to microbial proliferation under laboratory conditions. Binning of the assembled metagenome contigs of the cultured microbiota generated four nearly complete genomes affiliated to yet unclassified species under the genera Alcanivorax, Idiomarina, Sulfitobacter, and Erythrobacter. Excepting Alcanivorax, the other three genera were almost undetectable in the original samples and largely enriched in the cultured samples. The four genomes possessed a variety of genes for carbohydrate utilization and nitrite reduction, pointing to an ability to respire diverse carbon sources using nitrite as the final electron acceptor. Taken together, the findings suggest that a combination of culture enrichment and long-read sequencing is an ideal way to mine novel microbial species in the hadal environment, particularly species that are rare in their native environmental niches, and thus expand our understanding of the hadal microbial diversity and function.

Effects of relative humidity on ethanol vapour releases from hydrophilic filmbased sachet in active food packaging

Active food package incorporating an ethanol vapour-controlled release sachet has been known for its efficacies to delay microbial proliferation in fresh fruit and vegetable. High humidity inside the package could be utilized as a stimulus for conditional releases as a means to stabilize the sachet prior to being used. The present research was undertaken to investigate the effects of relative humidity on ethanol vapour release from the hydrophilic film-based sachet. The prototype 4-side sealed sachets were made of either ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) or laminated film comprising EVA and Nylon/PE (designated as ENP). A gas chromatogram equipped with a flame-ionized detector (FID-GC) was employed to analyze ethanol vapour concentration levels released from both sachet types and accumulated in headspaces of sealed glass beakers having different relative humidity (RH) levels. For a given RH level, the concentrations in the headspaces containing the ENPbased sachets were lower than those containing the EVA-based sachets. Delays of ethanol vapour release up to 24 h were observed in the ENP-based sachet system, whilst these did not occur among EVA-based sachets. Both sachets could release ethanol vapour with faster rates and subsequently higher concentrations accumulated at the very high relative humidity level (90-99% RH), compared to lower RH levels (60-89% RH). However, the release rates and concentration levels accumulated in 60-75% RH were not different from those in 80-89% RH. Extents of water vapour uptake by films were relatively small when the films were kept at the lower RH levels, but these became exponentially increased when the RH levels were ≥90%RH. Experimental data on water vapour uptakes were well predicted by an exponential model (R2 0.92-0.99; and root mean square of errors (RMSE) 0.004-0.054). Overall, experiment findings indicate that the ENP film caused delayed ethanol vapour releases from the sachet. The relative humidity levels had significant effects on the releases from hydrophilic film-based sachets

Microbial Spoilage of Plant-Based Meat Analogues

Plant-based meat analogues (i.e., plant-based meat alternatives or substitutes, or vegan meats) are becoming more and more popular. The quality of the available products is constantly increasing therefore their consumption is also increasing. The primary role of meat analogues is to replace the meat component in meals while appropriate nutrient content and hedonic value will be provided as well. The food safety aspects of these newly emerging food products are less investigated. The aim of this study is to compare the microbial spoilage of identical meals prepared with meat and meat analogues to evaluate the food safety risk of meat analogues. In this work, raw protein materials were tested. Moreover, three pairs of meals prepared with or without meat were microbiologically examined during a storage experiment. Microbial contaminants were low in raw protein sources. In the case of hot meals, the microbial proliferation was faster in samples containing meat analogue, especially if the meals were not cooled. The food safety risk of meals prepared with meat analogues is slightly higher than their meat-containing counterparts, therefore more attention needs to be paid to the preparation, processing, and storage of these foods.

Antimicrobial potential of a bioactive coating based on chitosan incorporated with clove essential oil in hamburger-like meat product

The food industry is looking for strategies to prevent microbial growth in order to ensure food safety and shelf life. However, the use of synthetic preservatives, such as nitrate and nitrite in meat products, entails risks to human health. An alternative is the utilization of essential oils, widely known for their antimicrobial properties. This work aimed the antimicrobial potential of a bioactive coating based on chitosan incorporated with clove essential oil in in hamburger-like meat product. Through the analysis of antimicrobial activity by diffusion in agar and broth, there was an action against Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. Regarding Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli, the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) was 3.74 mg/mL and the minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) was 374.33 mg/mL for both. In the micro atmospheric diffusion test, CEO reduced by up to 70 and 76% of the E. coli and S. aureus bacteria development, respectively. CEO was applied as an active component in chitosan-based coatings in hamburger-like meat, in which it was able to promote the control of microbial proliferation of Total Coliforms, Coliforms at 45 ⁰C and Coagulase-Positive Staphylococcus throughout 7 days of storage under refrigeration. It is concluded that the bioactive coating based on chitosan incorporated with clove essential oil promotes microbiological control in hamburger-like meat product.

Untangling Microbiota Diversity and Assembly Patterns in the World's Largest Water Diversion Canal

Large water diversion projects are important constructions for reallocation of human-essential water resources. Deciphering microbiota dynamics and assembly mechanisms underlying canal water ecosystem services especially during long-distance diversion is the prerequisite for water quality monitoring, biohazard warning and sustainable management. Using a 1432-km canal of the South-to-North Water Diversion Projects as a model system, we answer three central questions: how bacterial and micro-eukaryotic communities spatio-temporally develop, how much ecological stochasticity contributes to microbiota assembly, and which immigrating populations better survive and navigate across the canal. We applied quantitative ribosomal RNA gene sequence analyses to investigate canal water microbial communities sampled over a year, as well as null model- and neutral model-based approaches to disentangle the microbiota assembly processes. Our results showed clear microbiota dynamics in community composition driven by seasonality more than geographic location, and seasonally dependent influence of environmental parameters. Overall, bacterial community was largely shaped by deterministic processes, whereas stochasticity dominated micro-eukaryotic community assembly. We defined a local growth factor (LGF) and demonstrated its innovative use to quantitatively infer microbial proliferation, unraveling taxonomically dependent population response to local environmental selection across canal sections. Using LGF as a quantitative indicator of immigrating capacities, we also found that most micro-eukaryotic populations (82%) from the source lake water sustained growth in the canal and better acclimated to the hydrodynamical water environment than bacteria (67%). Taxa inferred to largely propagate include Limnohabitans sp. and Cryptophyceae, potentially contributing to water auto-purification. Combined, our work poses first and unique insights into the microbiota assembly patterns and dynamics in the world's largest water diversion canal, providing important ecological knowledge for long-term sustainable water quality maintenance in such a giant engineered system.

Effect of a Commercial Disinfectant CLORICAN® on Acanthamoeba spp. and Naegleria fowleri Viability

Swimming pool water treatment by chemicals is an essential step to avoid microbial proliferation and infections namely caused by free living amoeba such as, for example, primary amebic meningoencephalitis and Acanthamoeba keratitis. In the present study, a commercial reactive, CLORICAN, based on chlorine dioxide, was evaluated against Acanthamoeba spp. and Naegleria fowleri. We observed that CLORICAN could eliminate in a short period of incubation time both amoebae. Furthermore, Naegleria fowleri’s trophozoites were more sensitive than those of Acanthamoeba spp. By means of inverted microscopy, the chlorine dioxide was found to greatly affect morphology shape by increasing the cell size shrinkage.