Summary Francisella tularensis causes a lethal human disease known as tularemia. As an intracellular pathogen, Francisella survives and replicates in phagocytic cells, such as macrophages. However, to establish an intracellular niche, Francisella must overcome the oxidative stress posed by the reactive oxygen species (ROS) produced by the infected macrophages. OxyR and SoxR/S are two well-characterized transcriptional regulators of oxidative stress responses in several bacterial pathogens. Only the OxyR homolog is present in F. tularensis, while the SoxR homologs are absent. The functional role of OxyR has not been established in F. tularensis. We demonstrate that OxyR regulates oxidative stress responses and provides resistance against ROS, thereby contributing to the survival of the F. tularensis subsp. holarctica live vaccine strain (LVS) in macrophages and epithelial cells and contributing to virulence in mice. Proteomic analysis reveals the differential production of 128 proteins in the oxyR gene deletion mutant, indicating its global regulatory role in the oxidative stress response of F. tularensis. Moreover, OxyR regulates the transcription of the primary antioxidant enzyme genes by binding directly to their putative promoter regions. This study demonstrates that OxyR is an important virulence factor and transcriptional regulator of the oxidative stress response of the F. tularensis LVS.

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This paper proposes a compact zeroth-order resonant (ZOR) antenna with improved gain and efficiency. The proposed CRLH unit cell is based on the coplanar waveguide (CPW) structure. The proposed ZOR antenna is designed for a 2.45 GHz frequency band, and it has the characteristic of monopolar radiation. Shunt inductance is implemented by microstrip short-circuit stubs, and a metal-isolator-metal (MIM) capacitator provides series capacitance, where a large capacitance can be achieved in a small footprint. The proposed antenna comprises two interleaving composite right-/lefthanded CRLH unit cells, where the size of one unit cell is measured at only 0.12λ 0 × 0.098λ 0. Because the field is loosely confined within the CPW-based unit cell, a good antenna peak gain of 2.03 dBi, and a radiation efficiency of over 68% is achieved when fabricated on a thin substrate. The proposed antenna did not require an additional matching network, reducing the total antenna footprint. This paper presents antenna parameters such as the return loss, radiation pattern, antenna gain, and radiation efficiency to validate the proposed design, which achieved good simulation results.

This paper proposes planar antennas with quadri-polarization diversity using a pair of orthogonal linear polarizations and a pair of orthogonal circular polarizations (CP). A novel feeding network with four input ports and four output ports is presented, allowing antenna polarization diversity by selecting different input ports, which can generate right-handed CP, left-handed CP, horizontal linear polarization, and vertical linear polarization. The first design uses two square patch resonators to synthesize the four polarizations; the second design comprises four circularly polarized patches to synthesize the four polarizations with an improved axial-ratio (the ratio of orthogonal components of an E-field) bandwidth. The proposed designs do not require for embedding PIN diodes and DC-biasing circuits, making them suitable for use in higher-frequency applications where using lump elements would be difficult. The novel antennas provide potential polarization diversity features which can be used for many applications. Details of the antenna design are shown, and the measurement and simulation results are also provided to validate the proposed concept.