To the Editor: The Department of Surgery at the Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine is proud of its 100% pass rate in the October 2008 Colleges of Medicine of South Africa examinations held in Durban. Most candidates attended the graduation and joined the 3 who passed in May as registered specialists in general surgery. This represents a stalwart effort on the part of the candidates and their t...

Aptamers are a new class of molecular probes for protein recognition, detection, and inhibition. Multivalent aptamer-protein binding through aptamer assembly has been currently developed as an effective way to achieve higher protein affinity and selectivity. In this study, the specific interaction between bivalent aptamer Bi-8S and thrombin has been measured directly and quantitatively by atomi...

A method is described to produce glass-coated tungsten microelectrodes in 4 simple steps: (1) etching of the wire, (2) coating with glass, (3) fire-polishing, and (4) reopening with hydrofluoric acid to adjust the conductance to a final value. Continuous conductance control is provided during the reopening process by means of an admittance meter to guarantee an exact final adjustment of the con...

Gene-poor human chromosomes are reproducibly found at the nuclear periphery in proliferating cells. There are a number of inner nuclear envelope proteins that may have roles in chromosome location and anchorage, e.g. emerin and A-type lamins. In the last decade, a number of diseases associated with tissue degeneration and premature aging have been linked with mutations in lamin A or emerin. The...