Genetic and Functional Analyses of Virulence Potential of an Escherichia coli O157:H7 Strain Isolated From Super-Shedder Cattle

Shiga toxin (Stx)-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) O157:H7 is an enteric pathogen that causes life-threatening disease in humans, with cattle being major natural reservoirs. A group of STEC O157:H7 with a dramatic combination of high virulence potentials and super-shedder bovine origin have been isolated. Here, an STEC O157:H7 isolate, JEONG-1266, was analyzed by comparative genomics, stx genotyping, and phenotypic analyses. The phylogenetic typing and whole-genome comparison consistently showed that JEONG-1266 is genetically close to EC4115 (one of 2006 Spinach outbreak isolates) and SS17 (an isolate from super-shedder cattle) strains, all of which belong to lineage I/II and Clade 8. Both lineage I/II and Clade 8 are known to be mostly associated with clinical strains with high virulence and severe clinical symptoms. Further, JEONG-1266, like EC4115 and SS17, harbors stx2a/stx2c genes, and carries Stx-encoding prophages, specifically the φstx2a-γ subtype. Possession of the φstx2a-γ subtype of Stx-encoding prophages and production of Stx2a have been shown to be a key signature associated with hypervirulent STEC O157:H7 strains. In silico virulence typing elucidated JEONG- 1266, EC4115, and SS17 shared a highly conserved profile of key virulence genes at the nucleotide sequence level. Consistently, phenotypic data showed that JEONG-1266 expressed a high level of Stx2 toxins and had the full capacity of adhesion in vitro. Taken together, our study suggests that JEONG-1266 may represent an emerging STEC O157:H7 group, which are hypervirulent strains that originate from super-shedders, that can be a threat to food safety and public health

Green-Schwarz superstring on doubled-yet-gauged spacetime

We construct a world-sheet action for Green-Schwarz superstring in terms of doubled-yet-gauged spacetime coordinates. For an arbitrarily curved NS-NS background, the action possesses $\mathbf{O}(10,10)$ T-duality, $\mathbf{Spin}(1,9)\times\mathbf{Spin}(9,1)$ Lorentz symmetry, coordinate gauge symmetry, spacetime doubled-yet-gauged diffeomorphisms, world-sheet diffeomorphisms and Weyl symmetry. Further, restricted to flat backgrounds, it enjoys maximal spacetime supersymmetry and kappa-symmetry. After the auxiliary coordinate gauge symmetry potential being integrated out, our action can consistently reduce to the original undoubled Green-Schwarz action. Thanks to the twofold spin groups, the action is unique: it is specific choices of the NS-NS backgrounds that distinguish IIA or IIB, as well as lead to non-Riemannian or non-relativistic superstring a la Gomis-Ooguri which might deserve the nomenclature, type IIC.Comment: 1+27 pages. No figure. v2) Wess-Zumino term identified, More Refs. To be published in JHE

Stringy Gravity: Solving the Dark Problems at `short' distance

Dictated by Symmetry Principle, string theory predicts not General Relativity but its own gravity which assumes the entire closed string massless sector to be geometric and thus gravitational. In terms of $R/(MG)$, i.e. the dimensionless radial variable normalized by mass, Stringy Gravity agrees with General Relativity toward infinity, but modifies it at short distance. At far short distance, gravitational force can be even repulsive. These may solve the dark matter and energy problems, as they arise essentially from small $R/(MG)$ observations: long distance divided by much heavier mass. We address the pertinent differential geometry for Stringy Gravity, stringy Equivalence Principle, stringy geodesics and the minimal coupling to the Standard Model. We highlight the notion of `doubled-yet-gauged' coordinate system, in which a gauge orbit corresponds to a single physical point and proper distance is defined between two gauge orbits by a path integral.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures. Invited plenary talk at Joint Conference of ICGAC-XIII and IK15, 3-7 July 201