Bacillus cereus

But I want to take a step back because metallobetalactamases have really been around for a long time, and they can kind of first be divided as chromosomally encoded betalactamases versus plasmid mediated.

And so some examples of organisms that have chromosomally encoded metallobetalactamases might be like Bacillus cereus, or maybe your audience might be familiar with Stenotrophomonas multifilia, which has an L1 betalactamase on its chromosome that is a metallobetalactamase.

So I'm going to, for a second, just differentiate those chromosomally encoded enzymes with the ones you had mentioned, which we often associate as being plasmid mediated, meaning they're transferred on mobile genetic elements.

And the three most common ones that we talk about are IM or imipenemase, VIM, which stands for Verona, integron-encoded metallobetalactamase, and NDM, or New Delhi metallobetalactamase.

really is.

Uncooked rice contains spores of a bacteria called Bacillus cereus that actually survive the boiling process.

So if you leave that cooked rice sitting out at room temperature, it basically turns into an incubator for those spores.

Cool it fast.

They were eating and producing waste.

And as part of their life cycle, specific bacteria like Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus cereus produce waste products called enterotoxins.

Enterotoxins.

So it's like a biological byproduct.

Right.

Well, no, rice actually has... a tendency to harbor bacteria of the Bacillus cereus type.

And that's the one that has spores.

Now, spores are inactive bacteria.