The bacteriophage mu lysis system–A new mechanism of host lysis?

Bacteriophages are viruses that infect bacteria and can choose any one of the two alternative pathways for infection,i.e.,lysis or lysogeny.Phage lysis is one of the conventional biological processes required to spread infection from one bacterium to another.Our analysis suggests that in the paradigm bacteriophage Mu,six proteins might be involved in host cell lysis.Mu has a broad host range,and Mu-like phages were found in both Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria.An analysis of the genomes of Mu and Mu-like phages could be useful in elucidating the lysis mechanism in this group of phages.A detailed review of the various mechanisms of phage lysis and different proteins associated with the process will help researchers understand the phage biology and their life cycle in different bacteria.The recent increase in the number of multidrug-resistant(MDR)strains of bacteria and the usual long-term nature of new drug development has encouraged scientists to look for alternative strategies like phage therapy and the discovery of new lysis mechanisms.Understanding the lysis mechanism in the Mu-like phages could be exploited to develop alternative therapeutics to kill drug-resistant pathogenic bacteria.In this review article,we have analyzed the phage Mu-mediated host lysis system,which is unknown till now,and our analysis indicates a possibility of the existence of a new lysis mechanism operating in Mu.

A novel vague set approach for selective contrast enhancement of mammograms using multiresolution

The proposed algorithm introduces a novel vague set approach to develop a selective but robust, flexible and intelligent contrast enhancement technique for mammograms. Wavelet based filtering analysis can produce Low Frequency (LF) and High Frequency (HF) subbands of the original input images. The extremely small size microcalcifications become visible under multiresolution techniques. LF subband is then fuzzified by conventional fuzzy c-means clustering (FCM) algorithm with justified number of clusters. HF components, representing the narrow protrusions and other fine details are also fuzzified by FCM with justified number of clusters. Vague set approach captures the hesitancies and uncertainties of truly affected masses/other breast abnormalities with normal glandular tissues. After highlighting the masses/microcalcifications accurately, both LF and HF subbands are transformed back to the original resolution by inverse wavelet transform. The results show that the proposed method can successfully enhance the selected regions of mammograms and provide better contrast images for visual interpretation.