Joke Hollants

d-teach

Imbalanced feeding regimes may initiate gastrointestinal and metabolic diseases in endangered felids kept in captivity such as cheetahs. Given the crucial role of the host's intestinal microbiota in feed fermentation and health maintenance, a better understanding of the cheetah's intestinal ecosystem is essential for improvement of current feeding...

The ecological success of giant celled, siphonous green algae in coastal habitats has repeatedly been linked to endophytic bacteria living within the cytoplasm of the hosts. Yet, very little is known about the relative importance of evolutionary and ecological factors controlling the intracellular bacterial flora of these seaweeds. Using the marine...

Many eukaryotes are closely associated with bacteria which enable them to expand their physiological capacities. Associations between algae (photosynthetic eukaryotes) and bacteria have been described for over a hundred years. A wide range of beneficial and detrimental interactions exists between macroalgae (seaweeds) and epi- and endosymbiotic bac...

“Life did not take over the globe by combat, but by networking” (Lynn Margulis - evolutionary biologist). Life itself is contained in this one sentence. Besides Darwin's famous ‘natural selection' theory, symbiosis, the cooperation between different organisms, is necessary for the survival and evolution of species. Looking at a human being, an anim...

Transmission electron micrograph of vegetative Bryopsis thallus in longisection. Figure A: the outer cytoplasmic layer (ol) adjacent to the Bryopsis cell wall (cw) contains most of the organelles excluding only the chloroplasts (chl), which are present in the inner layer next to the central vacuole (cv). Magnification: × 8000, Scale bar: 3 μm. Figu...

The marker used as a normalization and identification tool in all DGGE analyses. This marker covers the full range of endophytic (including chloroplast) sequences previously obtained from Bryopsis samples MX19, MX90, MX164, MX263 and MX344 [3]. For each marker band, the band name (M1m, M1b, M2-M10), taxonomic identification, clone reference and acc...

The siphonous green macroalga Bryopsis has some remarkable characteristics. Besides hosting a rich endophytic bacterial flora, Bryopsis also displays extraordinary wound repair and propagation mechanisms. This latter feature includes the formation of protoplasts which can survive in the absence of a cell membrane for several minutes before regenera...

Bacterial 16S rRNA gene sequences isolated from algae (excluding BLAST hits) included in the phylogenetic analysis. (DOCX)

A wide-range maximum likelihood tree showing the phylogenetic positions of endophytic clones and DGGE bands. Phylogenies were inferred from 16S rRNA gene sequences determined in this study (in bold), BLAST hits (see Table 1), Bacteroidetes, Proteobacteria and Mollicutes type strains, and algae-associated bacteria described in the literature (see Su...

Associations between marine seaweeds and bacteria are widespread, with endobiotic bacterial-algal interactions being described for over 40 years. Also within the siphonous marine green alga Bryopsis, intracellular bacteria have been visualized by electron microscopy in the early '70s, but were up to now never molecularly analyzed. To study this par...

In the search for endosymbiotic bacteria, elimination of ectosymbionts is a key point of attention. Commonly, the surface of the host itself or the symbiotic structures are sterilized with aggressive substances such as chlorine or mercury derivatives. Although these disinfectants are adequate to treat many species, they are not suitable for surface...

To assess the presence of middle ear pathogens in nasopharynx (NP), middle ear fluid (MEF), and middle ear mucosal swabs (MES) of 14 patients undergoing middle ear surgery. Bacteria were assessed by culture and species specific PCR. Biofilm was investigated by confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) of middle ear biopsies (MEBs). Bacteria were ab...