J Bacteriol 2002,184(19):5457–5467.PubMedCrossRef 41. Roche FM, Downer R, Keane F, Speziale P, Park PW, Foster FK228 TJ: The N-terminal A domain of fibronectin-binding proteins A and B promotes adhesion of Staphylococcus

aureus to elastin. J Biol Chem 2004,279(37):38433–38440.PubMedCrossRef Authors’ contributions IS carried out the molecular and biochemical studies, participated in the animal experiment and drafted the manuscript. I-MJ carried out the animal experiments. AT, MB participated in the design and coordination of experiments and contributed to drafting the manuscript. IS, I-MJ and MB read and approved the final version of manuscript, AT read and approved an earlier version prior to his untimely death.”
“Background Coxiella burnetii is an obligate intracellular find more Gram negative bacterium which causes Q fever, an illness with multiple clinical manifestations in its acute presentation, including a flu-like respiratory process that could result in atypical pneumonia, or fever of intermediate duration (FID) with liver involvement. In a low percentage of cases a chronic form of the disease is diagnosed, characterized by an infection

that persists for more than 6 months, more frequently endocarditis, which can be fatal without an appropriate treatment [1]. Its high infectivity, resistance in adverse environmental conditions and aerosol route of transmission make this agent a candidate for intentional release [2], being listed as a category B bioterrorism agent by the USA Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Initial studies tried to correlate specific genotypes (GT) with the chronic and acute forms of the disease. Thus, certain plasmid patterns were claimed to be associated with the disease outcome [3, 4], which was

controversial [5]; also, some isocitrate dehydrogenase types else were associated with chronic disease and a role for this gene in the adaptation of the organism to the intracellular environment was proposed [6], although this association was also challenged by other authors [7]. More recently, different attempts have been made to classify isolates of C. burnetii in different genomic groups (GG). Based on restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) of the entire genome, Hendrix et al. [8] resolved 36 isolates of different origin in 6 GG; Jager et al. [9] Anlotinib concentration performed pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) in 80 isolates that were classified into 4 GG; a Multispacer Sequence Typing method [10], based on the sequencing of 10 intergenic spacers classified 173 isolates, mainly from chronic disease, into 3 monophyletic groups and 30 GT; later, a reduced MST method was published by Mediannikov et al. [11], targeting 3 spacers in a single PCR, detecting 3 MST GTs; Svraka et al.