Capsule synthesis by Bacillus anthracis is required for dissemination in murine inhalation anthrax

Bacillus anthracis, the agent of anthrax, produces a poly-D-glutamic acid capsule that has been implicated in virulence. Many strains missing pXO2 (96 kb), which harbors the capsule biosynthetic operon capBCAD, but carrying pXO1 (182 kb) that harbors the anthrax toxin genes, are attenuated in animal models. Also, noncapsulated strains are readily phagocytosed by macrophage cell lines, whereas capsulated strains are resistant to phagocytosis. We show that a strain carrying both virulence plasmids but deleted specifically for capBCAD is highly attenuated in a mouse model for inhalation anthrax. The parent strain and capsule mutant initiated germination in the lungs, but the capsule mutant did not disseminate to the spleen. A mutant harboring capBCAD but deleted for the cap regulators acpA and acpB was also significantly attenuated, in agreement with the capsule-negative phenotype during in vitro growth. Surprisingly, an acpB mutant, but not an acpA mutant, displayed an elevated LD(50) and reduced ability to disseminate, indicating that acpA and acpB are not true functional homologs and that acpB may play a larger role in virulence than originally suspected

Nation, College, Wartime: Archaeology at a WWI Student Army Training Corps Camp at New Hampshire College

During World War I, the U.S. War Department contracted with 157 universities to form the National Army Training Detachments whose mission was to train college-age draftees in 66 critical army trades (subsequently the Student Army Training Corps). This program is an overlooked part of First World War history and has received little to no archaeological inquiry. This paper investigates the New Hampshire College camp. Working between documentary and archaeological materials, this paper explores how the interrelated duties of educational institutions, businesses, government, and individuals merged with an American wartime imagined community here but also how in their lived experiences of the camp, people materialized the complications of balancing citizenship, difference, duty, and nation. The social lives of the lower-rank men who inhabited these camps, the composite communities formed at them, and the impact of the government’s assertion of control over institutions of higher education all carry material ramifications that deserve further investigation