Abstract

efforts in the initial cloning of the mhaC gene of M. catarrhalis strain O12E as well as their work in constructing the bocA1 and bocA2 mutations in B. mallei and B. pseudomallei and generation of recombinant clones expressing these genes. Both parties also did a tremendous amount of work in developing the adherence assays for B. mallei and B. pseudomallei. I would also like to thank Jonathan Hassel for his unrelenting work in attempting to obtain a clone expressing M. catarrhalis MhaC and MhaB2 in the recombinant E. coli background. Mr. Hassel also contributed to our work with B. pseudomallei and B. mallei by creating constructs to express His-tagged BocA1 and BocA2 and purifying these proteins for their use in generation of polyclonal antibodies. I wish to acknowledge John Lazarus and Dr. Mark Wooten for performing the qRT-PCR used to show expression of BocA1 and BocA2 in B. mallei and B. pseudomallei as well as William Grose for some of his preliminary work with these organisms. Lastly, I would like to thank Dr. Donald Woods at the University of Calgary for providing the B. mallei and B. pseudomallei strains used in these studies along with his