News in General

LONDON (Reuters) – A highly infectious new strain of E.coli bacteria is causing a deadly outbreak of food poisoning in Germany, scientists said on Thursday, with cases in Europe and the United States raising the alarm worldwide.

Experts in China, part of a global network of laboratories racing to understand the sickness which killed a 17th victim overnight, said they had found the bug carried genes that made it resistant to several classes of antibiotics.

The United Nations said the strain had not infected people before but some consumers, especially in Germany, said they were nervous about eating raw vegetables.

With around 1,500 people in Germany already ill in one of the worst recorded outbreaks of E.coli, Russia prompted international recriminations by banning imports of fresh vegetables from Europe and accusing Brussels of sowing chaos by failing to give enough information about the outbreak.

The precise source of the outbreak is unknown, but scientists say studies so far suggest it is highly likely to be contaminated vegetables or salads in Germany.

"This E.coli is a new strain of bacteria that is highly infectious and toxic," said the Chinese scientists at the Beijing Genomics Institute in Shenzhen city.

At the World Health Organization, the United Nations health watchdog, a spokeswoman said: "This strain has never been seen in an outbreak situation before."

E.coli infections can spread from person to person but only by what is known as the faecal-oral route. Health experts in Germany are advising strict hygiene regimes and recommending that consumers avoid eating raw salads and vegetables.

The outbreak is causing severe infections, mostly in female adults, and in a number of cases, serious complications affecting the blood and kidneys. Haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS), an unusual complication of some types of E.coli, has been diagnosed in hundreds of the cases.

Russia's ban on Thursday on all raw vegetables from the European Union prompted cries of protest from the Polish and Dutch governments and a rebuke from the European Commission.

Moscow had already banned imports of vegetables from Germany and Spain because of the infections, which German officials originally blamed on contaminated cucumbers imported from Spain before backtracking and apologizing to Madrid.

Gennady Onishchenko, head of Russia's consumer protection agency, said the deaths showed the "much-praised European sanitary legislation...does not work," Interfax news agency reported..

In Germany, some consumers were worried the disease could even spread by human contact. A high-profile church event in the city of Dresden, attended by 120,000 people, was not serving raw vegetables altogether on Thursday, according to ZDF television.

"I noticed that there were no raw vegetables, which I found calming..." one attendee was quoted as saying.

Another participant added: "I've thought about what I can eat and what I can risk. Yesterday I noticed someone saying: yuk, there's lettuce on top of this."

In Moscow, shops prepared to dump EU vegetables and consumers expressed a mixture of scorn and pride at the ban. But some disagreed strongly, saying the threat was exaggerated.

"I am not afraid of buying vegetables from any country here," said pensioner Vyacheslav Yegorov, carrying a shopping basket filled with grapes and fresh vegetables. "This thing will blow over and be forgotten tomorrow."

"EXCESSIVE"

Spain is threatening legal action over the crisis. It wants compensation for its farmers, who say lost sales are costing them 200 million euros ($287 million) a week and could put 70,000 people out of work.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero accused the European Commission of being slow to act and said Germany "should know that it has an overall responsibility to other states in the European Union."

"We shall ask for very forthright explanations and...demand sufficient reparations," he told Spanish state radio.

A statement from Spain's presidential office said Germany would consider measures to compensate Spanish farmers for the loss of sales.

The statement said Chancellor Angela Merkel had told Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero by telephone that she regretted the damage suffered by Spanish farmers.

Poland, which along with France and Germany is one of Europe's biggest exporters of fruits and vegetables to Russia, said Moscow's move was "excessive compared to the danger," while the Netherlands, famous for its mass-production of salad crops such as lettuce and tomatoes, described it as a major blow.

"After the collapse of the German consumer market, sales to Russia are now also impossible," the Dutch junior minister for economic affairs, agriculture and innovation Henk Bleker said.

EU countries exported 594 million euros ($853 million) worth of vegetables to Russia last year while EU imports of vegetables from Russia were just 29 million euros, EU data show. It was not clear what proportion of that was raw.

NASTY HYBRID

German officials have said there is "still is no indication of a definable source" for the outbreak and scientists are working around the clock to try to pinpoint it.

The contamination source is highly like to be somewhere in Germany, since all cases of infection are there or linked to it.

The WHO said it had also been notified of cases in Austria, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Britain. EU officials have said three cases have also been reported in the United States.

Almost all the cases are in people who had recently visited Germany. Many patients have been hospitalized, the WHO said, with several needing intensive care, including dialysis due to kidney complications.

Health experts say they are shocked by the outbreak, which is on a scale never seen before in the region. HUS frequently leads to kidney failure and can kill.

Whilst most strains of E.coli do not cause disease, some strains including this one are able to attach tightly to the wall of the intestines and produce toxins.

Stephen Smith, a microbiologist at Trinity College in Dublin said this strain appeared "to be a hybrid of two different E. coli types, which are nasty themselves."

The hybrid strain also contains the Shiga-like toxin from Enterohaemorrhagic E.coli, he said. This toxin binds to and damages kidney cells and can lead to potentially fatal HUS.

The Chinese scientists said the bacterium they identified was closely related to another E.coli strain called EAEC 55989 which has previously been found in Africa and is known to cause serious diarrhea.

A handful of bacterial genes crucial to survival were successfully replaced by artificial ones in a new synthetic-biology experiment.

It’s not clear how the synthetic genes rescued the doomed E. coli bacteria, which had several important sequences of DNA knocked out of its genome. But scientists think synthetic proteins produced by the new genes replaced the missing natural versions.

“To enable life you need genes and proteins, which are information and machines,” said molecular biologist Michael Hecht of Princeton University, co-author of the study published online in PLoS ONE.

“These evolved over a very long period of time, but we wanted to ask, ‘Are they really special, or can we make stuff like them from scratch?’ It seems we can.”

One of synthetic biology’s primary goals is to create customizable organisms able to produce food, fuel or pharmaceuticals; clean toxins from the environment; or even function as computers.
Most synthetic-biology experiments, including the J. Craig Venter Institute’s recent creation of a synthetic life form, rely on existing genes in nature. In the new experiment, however, Hecht and his team engineered a semi-random library of 1.5 million made-from-scratch genes.

Genes contain instructions for building proteins, which are made of units called amino acids. There are 20 different amino acids a protein can be made of, and some sequencesmake a protein fold into three dimensions.

Each gene in Hecht’s synthetic library calls for proteins made of 102 amino acids. Yet, instead of randomly filling each spot, the genes included sequences prompting them fold into four-helix structures

“Folding in three dimensions [is required for functionality] when it comes to proteins, so the library isn’t completely randomized,” Hecht said. “You might think of it as a targeted shotgun of randomness instead of a bomb of it.”

Twenty-seven strains of E. coli, each missing one gene critical for survival, individually mingled with the synthetic-gene library. Four strains of bacteria incorporated a synthetic gene into their DNA and grew on Petri dishes that contained only the bare nutrients for survival. Without the new genes, the four strains didn’t grow at all.

Taking the rescue of doomed microbes further, Hecht’s team made a strain of E. coli missing all four genes from the previous experiments. When the synthetic replacement genes from the library were added, the microbe was rescued.

“I think this is a very interesting start to some more research,” said biotechnologist Andrew Ellington of the University of Texas at Austin, who was not involved with the experiments. “I’d like to see more proof that these proteins are doing what [Hecht] says they’re doing…. There may be some weird things going on.”

Hecht said “it would be nice” to untangle the biochemistry of his genetic rescues, adding that the synthetic genes weren’t exactly optimum replacements for nature’s versions that were chiseled over billions of years of evolution. But he said that’s not the biggest takeaway from the experiment.

“We know which specific genetic sequences rescue the strains, even if we don’t yet know how they work,” Hecht said.

In addition to following up on the biochemistry of the genes that revived the bacteria, Hecht’s laboratory plans to engineer more-complex libraries and knock out even-more-crucial genes.

“‘How far can you go with this?’ is what we want to know. Could you knock out 100 genes and rescue all of them? Eventually a whole genome?” Hecht said.

Source: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/01/synthetic-gene-protein-rescue/

British scientist identifies genetic sequences in new E. coli strain

The other thing that I specifically found here is that I identified several genes that are in this current outbreak, and these are genes that are not found in any previously studied E. coli strain.

Source: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15133914,00.html

Food chain at risk of being poisoned by terrorist groups

The warning from the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure [CPNI], which operates as part of the Security Service, comes as experts warned the deadly E.coli outbreak in Germany has highlighted the vulnerability of the food chain and how quickly bacteria can spread.

A senior German doctor last night called for an investigation into the possibility that the bacteria had been spread deliberately.

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/8557373/Food-chain-at-risk-of-being-poisoned-by-terrorist-groups.html

“This particular E.coli variation is a member of the O104 strain, and O104 strains are almost never (normally) resistant to antibiotics. In order for them to acquire this resistance, they must be repeatedly exposed to antibiotics in order to provide the "mutation pressure" that nudges them toward complete drug immunity.

So how, exactly, does a bacterial strain come into existence that's resistant to over a dozen antibiotics in eight different drug classes and features two deadly gene mutations plus ESBL enzyme capabilities?

There's really only one way this happens (and only one way) -- you have to expose this strain of e.coli to all eight classes of antibiotics drugs. Usually this isn't done at the same time, of course: You first expose it to penicillin and find the surviving colonies which are resistant to penicillin. You then take those surviving colonies and expose them to tetracycline. The surviving colonies are now resistant to both penicillin and tetracycline. You then expose them to a sulfa drug and collect the surviving colonies from that, and so on. It is a process of genetic selection done in a laboratory with a desired outcome. This is essentially how some bioweapons are engineered by the U.S. Army in its laboratory facility in Ft. Detrick, Maryland.”

German hospitals sent samples of the E. coli to the Beijing Genome Center to have their DNA sequenced. On June 2, the Chinese researchers reported that the strain was not the same E. coli that contaminated the spinach, known as O157:H7. In fact, it was an entirely different strain, called O104:H4, that had never been associated with epidemics before. Tarr searched the medical literature for reports of the European strain. He could find only a handful of people who had carried it, and none of them got sick. But somehow this obscure microbe had turned vicious, triggering one of the biggest—if not the biggest—E. coli epidemics in history

The abundance of nerve endings in the anal region and rectum makes anal sex pleasurable for many men and women.[9] "The opening and closing of the anus is controlled by the internal and external sphincter muscles (the most important muscles when engaging in anal sex). The sphincter muscle is a sensitive membrane with many nerve endings and thus the source of pleasure or pain."

It is reported that most women can only achieve orgasm through clitoral stimulation.[15][16][17][18][19] The clitoris surrounds the vagina somewhat like a horseshoe, and is viewed as the key to women's sexual pleasure.[15][18] In addition to nerve endings present within the anus and rectum, a physiological explanation for why some women may find anal stimulation pleasurable is that the clitoris has "legs" which extend along the vaginal lips back to the anus.[20] The Gräfenberg spot, or G-Spot, a small area behind the female pubic bone surrounding the urethra and accessible through the anterior wall of the vagina, is considered to have legs in relation to the clitoris[15][21] which may also be accessible through anal penetration. Stimulation of the clitoris or G-Spot, or both, during anal sex may help some women to enjoy the experience.

In 1992, a study conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that only 26% of men 18 to 59 and 20% of women 18 to 59 had engaged in heterosexual anal sex; a similar 2005 survey (also conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) found a rising incidence of anal sex relations in the American heterosexual population. The survey showed that 40% of men and 35% of women between 25 and 44 had engaged in heterosexual anal sex.[43] In terms of overall numbers of survey respondents, seven times as many women as gay men said that they engaged in anal intercourse, with this figure reflecting the larger heterosexual population size.[44] According to the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior (NSSHB), although anal intercourse is reported by fewer women than other partnered sex behaviors, partnered women in the age groups between 18-49 are significantly more likely to report having anal sex in the past 90 days.[45]

In a 2007 report entitled Prevalence and Correlates of Heterosexual Anal and Oral Sex in Adolescents and Adults in the United States, published in the Journal of Infectious Disease, a national survey of Family Growth found that 34% men and 30% women reported ever participating in heterosexual anal sex. The percentage of participants reporting heterosexual anal sex was significantly higher among 20- to 24-year-olds and peaked among 30- to 34-year-olds.[46][47] Another survey in, 2008, focused on a much younger demographic of teenagers and young adults, aged 15–21. It found that 16% of 1350 surveyed had had this type of sex in the previous 3 months, with condoms being used 29% of the time.[48] However, given the subject matter, the survey hypothesized the prevalence was probably underestimated.

In 2009, Kimberly R. McBride published a clinical report in The Journal of Sex Research which stated that changing norms may affect the frequency of heterosexual anal sex behaviors and suggests that there is a role for the exotic in the sexual repertoires of some heterosexuals" "[F]or a certain number of heterosexuals, anal intercourse is pleasurable, exciting, and perhaps considered more intimate than vaginal sex...". McBride and her colleagues investigated the prevalence of non-intercourse anal sex behaviors among a sample of men (n=1,299) and women (n=1,919) compared to anal intercourse experience and found that 51% of men and 43% of women had participated in at least one act of oral–anal sex, manual–anal sex, or anal sex toy use.[46][49] McBride and Janssen found that the majority of men (n=631) and women (n=856) who reported heterosexual anal intercourse in the past 12 months were in exclusive, monogamous relationships: 69% and 73%, respectively.[46][49]

Figures for prevalence can vary amongst different demographics, regions, and nationalities. A 2001 French survey of five hundred female respondents concluded that a total of 29% had engaged in this practice, with one third of these confirming to have enjoyed the experience.[50] In contrast, in a 1999 South Korean survey of 586 women, 3.5% of respondents reported having had this type of sex.[51]

Figures for the prevalence of sexual behavior can also fluctuate over time. Edward O. Laumann's 1992 survey, reported in The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States, found that about 20% of heterosexuals had engaged in male-to-female anal sex. Sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, working in the 1940s, had found that number to be closer to 40% at the time. More recently, a researcher from the University of British Columbia in 2005 put the number of heterosexuals who have engaged in this practice at between 30% and 50%.[52] According to Columbia University's health website Go Ask Alice!: "Studies indicate that about 25 percent of heterosexual couples have had anal sex at least once, and 10 percent regularly have anal penetration."

Germany advises against homegrown sprouts
BERLIN (AP) — Authorities are advising Germans not to eat raw homegrown sprouts, pointing to suspicions that the seeds may be one cause of the country's deadly E. coli outbreak.

Officials on Friday traced the outbreak to sprouts from a farm in northern Germany but are still puzzling over how the bacteria got there — whether through workers, seeds or by other means.

The federal risk assessment agency said authorities suspect homegrown sprouts may be behind one infection in a family in northern Germany — though it says tests so far haven't found the bacteria in the seeds.

Authorities already had issued a wider warning against eating raw sprouts. The aggressive strain of E. coli has been blamed for 36 deaths, all but one of them in Germany.