Nocardia

Edmond Nocard.

Nocardiosis is an gram- positive, aerobic Actinomycete caused by a bacteria originally discovered by Edmond Nocard. This bacteria is commonly found in soil and water, and is known to affect the brain, lungs, and skin. This bacteria is usually found in areas of decay, such as standing water, decaying plants, and soils. It can be transmitted to humans by inhaling contaminated dust particulates, or getting some infected dirt into an open wound. Most often Nocardiosis will show up as a lung infection, and can rapidly spread throughout the body.

The man who discovered Nocardia, Edmond Nocard, was a French veterinarian and microbiologist born in 1850. Nocard went to veterinary school in France, and eventually joined the army in 1871. In 1978, he became the professor of pathology and clinical surgery. Nocard went on to become an assistant in the lab of Louis Pasteur. He helped in many experiments, including anthrax vaccinations in animals. He travelled to Egypt to isolate Cholera, but was unsuccessful. He eventually went on to develop techniques such as harvesting blood serum, creating new culture media for bacillus of T.B., and introduced anesthesia of large animals with chloro hydrate. Nocard’s main medical contribution was the of Nocardia, originally named Streptothrix farcinica, which tends to manifest itself in bovine, but can be found in humans as well. Edmond was rewarded in 1887 for his scientific discoveries, with the title director of the school, and he was given chair of Pasteur Institute.

References:

“Edmond Nocard.’  Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.  23 Jan. 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmond_Nocard

“History of Bovine TB.’  TB Free England.  23 Jan. 2019. https://www.tbfreeengland.co.uk/assets/4148

“Nocardosis” Center for Disease Control and Prevention. 23 Jan. 2019. https://www.cdc.gov /nocardosis/transmission/index.html.

Howard Taylor Ricketts was an American pathologist for whom the Rickettsiaceae family, Rickettsiales order, Rickettsia genus, and Rickettsia rickettsii bacteria are named after.   The genus of Rickettsia is the largest within the Rickettsiaceae family and includes rickettsialpox, other spotted fevers, epidemic typhus, and murine typhus.   Rickettsia rickettsii is a gram-negative, intercellular, coccobacillus bacterium approximately 0.8-2.0 micrometers long that was identified in 1907 by Howard Taylor Ricketts.   R. rickettsia was the first of the Rickettsiales to be identified, is the causative agent of Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and is the most pathogenic of the Rickettsia strains.

Howard Taylor Ricketts was born in Findlay, Ohio February 9, 1871.   He grew up in Nebraska, receiving his bachelor’s degree in 1894.   He went on to receive his medical degree from Northwestern University in 1897, where he conducted research on blastomycosis.  To study the side effects of the pathogens he was researching Howard Ricketts would inject himself with the pathogens.   During this time Ricketts worked as an intern in the Cook County Hospital in Chicago.   From 1899-1901 he worked as a fellow in cutaneous pathology in Rush Medical College, also working in the dermatological clinic.   Howard Ricketts married Myra Tubbs in 1900.   They had two children together, a boy and a girl.     Myra was supportive of his work, took interest in his research and provided him with steady encouragement.

In 1901, his research earned him a teaching offer from the University of Chicago’s Department of Pathology and Bacteriology.   Before accepting the offer, Ricketts traveled to Paris to study at the Pasteur Institute, returning in 1902 to teach and continue his research.

Ricketts took up researching Rocky Mountain spotted fever as a hobby in 1906 to pass the time during an enforced holiday.   He was quickly drawn in by the fascinating pathogen, promptly discovering R. rickettsii is communicable to lower animals and that the Rocky Mountain wood tick, which naturally lives on larger animals, can transmit the disease from a sick animal to a healthy one through its bite.   It has sense been found that the American dog tick and Brown dog ticks are also common carriers.   Through experiments Ricketts also discovered R. rickettsii can be transmitted through the feces of an infected host to a healthy one by ingestion or the feces coming in contacted with broken skin.   Infected female ticks can pass the R. rickettsii gene to their offspring.

In 1909 an outbreak of murine-carried typhus in Mexico caught Ricketts attention due to the apparent similarities between it and Rocky Mountain spotted fever.   In December he traveled with his assistant to Mexico City to help in the research where his research of R. rickettsii was crucial in helping discover the cause and vector of the marine-carried typhus.   On April 23, 1910 they made the announcement the discovery of the micro-organism, in the blood of patients and in the insects of human body lice.   Howard Taylor Ricketts died May 3, 1910 in Mexico of typhus.

Sources:

Hektoen, L. 1910. “Howard Taylor Ricketts Memorial Address at University of Chicago’. Today in Science. 20 Jan 2019.

https://www.todayinsci.com/R/Ricketts_Howard/RickettsHoward-MemorialAddress.htm

“Howard Taylor Ricketts.’ Building for a Long Future Exhibit. The University of Chicago Library. 20 Jan. 2019.

https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/collex/exhibits/building-long-future/howard-taylor-ricketts/

“Howard Taylor Ricketts.’ Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 20 Jan. 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Taylor_Ricketts

“Rickettsia rickettsii.’  Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 20 Jan. 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickettsia_rickettsii

Coxiella burnetii is a gram-negative rod shaped bacteria first isolated in the 1930s by both Frank MacFarlane Burnet and Herald Rea Cox. Though both Burnet and Cox isolated this bacterium in 1930s they did so independently. While Burnet and his associates were working on the isolation of  the pathogen associated with Query Fever in Australia, Cox was working on the isolation of the pathogen in Nine Mile Valley of Montana. Thus, the bacteria was renamed from Rickettsia burnetii to Coxiella burnetii in 1948 once it was realized that the two research groups were working on the same pathogen (Minnick & Raghaven, 2014)

Given this incidence of naming. There is no Latin Binomial name correlation other than the accreditation of these two researchers with the discovery.

Frank Macfarlane Burnet (1899-1985) was born in Traralgon, Australia. Upon accreditation and finalization of medical school at the University of Melbourne he received his Ph.D. from the University of London. One of his early achievements included developing the technique of culturing viruses in chicken embryos. He also developed the clonal selection theory of antibody formation which laid the foundation for modern immunology. (Britannica) For his work on Immunology and virology he was awarded the Copley Medal in 1959. The following year he was awarded to Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet and Peter Brian Medawar for their combined discovery of acquired immunological tolerance.

Herald Rea Cox (1907-1986) was born in Terre Haute, Indiana and obtained his doctorate from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.  (Herald R. Cox, ScD, 2017) He joined the U.S. Public Health Service in 1930 and began studying Mountain Spotted Fever or “Nine Mile Virus’ isolating the Coxiella burnetii in 1938, which allowed his development of vaccines to combat Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever (Q Fever) as well as for several strains of typhus.  In 1942 he moved to New York and became the chairman of the Virus and Rickettsia Research Department where he a worked in conjunction with several other researchers to develop the Polio vaccination (H.R. Cox, 2018)

References

Britannica, E. o. (n.d.). Sir Macfarlane Burnet Australian Physician. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 20 January, 2019, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Macfarlane-Burnet

H.R. Cox. (2018). Revolvy. Retrieved from https://www.revolvy.com/page/H.-R.-Cox

Herald R. Cox, ScD. (2017). Johns Hopkins Heroes of Public Health. Retrieved January 20, 2019, from https://www.jhsph.edu/about/history/heroes-of-public-health/herald-cox.html

Minnick, M., & Raghaven, R. (2014, July 21). Genetics of Coxiella burnetii: on the path of specialzation. Future Microbiology, 6(11), 1297-1314. doi:10.2217/fmb.11.116

Samantha Smith

Assignment 3:Due Jan. 28, 2019 (10 pts)

Research and write a short biography (100-250 words) of someone for whom a microbiological species is named, along with an explanation of the Latin binomial name.

• Cite at least 2 sources
• Everyone must choose a unique epithet,  claim yours here
• You can find lots of microbial species names here:  Approved Lists of Bacterial Names. The same site has  a list of bacterial genera named after people, as does  Wikipedia, which may be the same as above.  Bergey’s Manual has epithet explanations for all of its entries.

From  Biology-Online.org:

In taxonomy, a species is assigned a particular name called binomial (or scientific) name. The binomial name of a species is based on the binomial nomenclature system. It has to have two parts, i.e. the genus name and the specific epithet. For example, in  Escherichia coli  (the binomial name of a certain bacterial species), the genus name is  Escherichia  and the specific epithet is the  coli.

The  genus  name and the specific epithet are often based on the species’ distinctive features or descriptions derived from Latin and Greek languages. The specific epithet begins in small letter whereas the genus name starts in a capital letter. Both the genus name and the specific epithet are in italicized form. The genus name may be abbreviated but not the specific epithet. For instance, the scientific name for cat,  Felis domesticus, can be abbreviated into  F. domesticus.

Make sure to add your post to the “A3: Epithet Epitaphs‘ category for full credit!

Please also post the link to your post on the sign-up sheet after you’ve completed it. This makes it even easier for me to find and grade it.

Example (written by Dr. Eric Collins, 2018 BIOL 342 instructor):

Escherichia coli  is named after its discoverer, Theodor Escherich, an Austrian professor in the late 1800’s;  coli,  of or relating to bacteria normally inhabiting the intestine or colon. Escherich studied medicine at the University of Würzburg in Germany and then worked at a hospital there. He received his doctorate in 1882 studying cholera in children. There he became very interested in the welfare of children, as his physician father was before him, and particularly the high mortality rates associated with intestinal diseases in children. He discovered the bacterium we now know as  E. coli  in 1885.  At the time, it was not widely known or accepted that microorganisms were responsible for diarrhea. Even today, diarrhea kills almost a million people per year and is “the second leading cause of death among children under the age of 5’. In his time, Escherich was not primarily known as a microbiologist, but was known as an excellent physician. Nevertheless he studied bacterial agents in breast milk, bladder infections, and fecal matter, and their involvement in such diseases as tetanus, diptheria, and tuberculosis. He later moved to Vienna and become famous, eventually starting the “Imperial Institute of Maternal and Child Care’ to fight against high infant mortality rates. Escherich died unexpectedly at age 54, speaking strangely in French as a result of a  cerebral hemorrhage.

Sources:

“Theodor Escherich.’  Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.  11 Jan. 2018. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Escherich

Friedmann H. 2014. Escherich and  Escherichia, EcoSal Plus 2014; doi:10.1128/ecosalplus.ESP-0025-2013

“Global Diarrhea Burden’.  Centers for Disease Control. 11 Jan. 2018. https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/global/diarrhea-burden.html