Evaluation of Phenotyping and Genotyping Characterization of Serratia marcescens after Biofield Treatment

What is it about?

Serratia marcescens (S. marcescens) is Gram-negative bacterium, associated with hospital-acquired infections (HAIs), especially urinary tract and wound infections. The present study was aimed to evaluate the impact of biofield treatment on phenotyping and genotyping characteristics such as antimicrobial susceptibility, biochemical reactions, biotype, DNA polymorphism, and phylogenetic relationship of S. marcescens (ATCC 13880). The lyophilized cells of S. marcescens were divided into three groups (G1, G2, and G3). Control group (G1) and treated groups (G2 and G3) of S. marcescens cells assessed with respect to antimicrobial susceptibility, and biochemical reactions. In addition to that, samples from different groups of S. marcescens were evaluated for DNA polymorphism by Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD), and 16S rDNA sequencing in order to establish the phylogenetic relationship of S. marcescens with different bacterial species. The treated cells of S. marcescens showed an alteration of 10.34% and 34.48% antimicrobials in G2 and G3 on 10th day, respectively as compared to control. The significant changes of biochemical reactions were also observed in treated groups of S. marcescens. The RAPD data showed an average range of 16-49.2% of polymorphism in treated samples as compared to control. Based on nucleotide homology sequences and phylogenetic analysis, the nearest homolog genus-species was found to be Pseudomonas fluorescence. These findings suggest that biofield treatment can prevent the emergence of absolute resistance to the useful antimicrobials against S. marcescens.

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Why is it important?

Currently, many microorganisms have been acquired the resistance to number of antibiotics and other antimicrobial agents, which were effectively used earlier to cure a microbial infections. The antimicrobial resistant microbes (including bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites) can survive in antimicrobial drugs therapy. Therefore, regular treatments are ineffective. The frequent and improper use or misuse of antimicrobial medicines accelerates the emergence of drug-resistant microorganism, which was further spread by meagre infection control and poor sanitary conditions [1]. Serratia marcescens (S. marcescens) is a rod-shaped Gram-negative bacteria, belongs to family Enterobacteriaceae. It is a facultative anaerobic bacterium that can grow in presence and absence of oxygen at temperatures 30°C to 37°C. S. marcescens become an opportunist pathogen causing nosocomial infections and commonly involved in hospital-acquired infections (HAIs); specially urinary tract infections (UTIs), pneumonia, septicemia, meningitis and wound infections. Recently, S. marcescens drastically acquired the resistance to several existing antimicrobials like penicillin by decreasing the permeability and by β-lactamase to cleave the β-lactam ring of penicillin; fluoroquinolones (nalidixic acid, ciprofloxacin, ofloxacin, and norfloxacin), by proton dependent multidrug resistance (MDR) efflux pumps [2,3]. Therefore, development of effective antimicrobial therapy against S. marcescens is very needful for human health. Recently, biofield treatment came in focus that can cure the microbial infection by changing the microbial susceptibility against the antimicrobial drugs. The relation between mass-energy was described by Friedrich, then after Einstein gave the well-known equation E=mc2 for light and mass [4,5]. The mass (solid matter) is consist of energy and once this energy vibrates at a certain frequency, it gives physical, atomic and structural properties like shape, size, texture, crystal structure, and atomic weight to the matter. Similarly, human body also consists of vibratory energy particles like neutrons, protons, and electrons. Due to the vibration of these particles in the nucleus, an electrical impulse is generated [6]. Consequently, as per Ampere-Maxwell-Law, varying of these electrical impulses with time generates magnetic field, which cumulatively form electromagnetic field [7,8]. Thus, human has the ability to harness the energy from environment or universe and can transmit into any living or nonliving object(s) around the Globe. The objects always receive the energy and responding into useful way that is called biofield energy and the process is known as biofield treatment. Mr. Mahendra Trivedi’s biofield treatment (The Trivedi Effect®) has been applied to transform the structural, physical, and chemical properties of materials in several fields like material science [9-16], agriculture [17-19], and biotechnology [20,21]. The biofield treatment has considerably altered the genotype of the microbes and thereby changed in susceptibility to antimicrobials [22-24]. After consideration of clinical significance of S. marcescens and significant impact of biofield treatment on microbes, we felt a detailed investigation was required to evaluate the effect of biofield treatment on S. marcescens. After that, the organism was assessed in relation to antimicrobials susceptibility and biotyping based on various biochemical reactions. We also explored the genotyping of this organism using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) based methodologies of randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) and 16S rDNA sequencing techniques. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report that explores the impact of biofield treatment on S. marcescens.

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