Quantitative immunoelectrophoresis allows a polyvalent approach to immuno-chemical problems, i.e., identification, quantitation, and thereby standardization of antigens and antibodies in complex mixtures, for example as in crude extracts of microorganisms and their corresponding antisera. This approach is a short cut to conventional standardization of single purified substances, since the polyv...

The purpose of this study was to establish the validity and reliability of a hydrostatic weighing method using total lung capacity (measuring vital capacity with a respirometer at the time of weighing) the prone position, and a small oblong tank. The validity of the method was established by comparing the TLC prone (tank) method against three hydrostatic weighing methods administered in a pool....

OBJECTIVES To determine the level of serum procalcitonin, blood leukocyte count (TLC) and C-reactive protein (CRP) in children with bacterial and non bacterial meningitis and document their efficacy in differential diagnosis. Also described are procalcitonin levels variation during treatment. METHODS From March 2005 to February 2008, we evaluated 38 clinically suspected meningitis patients in...

Roles of lung volumes in asthma remain controversial. We aimed to evaluate the efficacy of lung volumes in differentiating asthma severity levels. Consecutive outpatients with chronic persistent asthma were enrolled, and body plethysmography (BP) and helium dilution (HD) were performed simultaneously to extract RV%pred, TLC%pred, and RV/TLC. Significant negative correlations were found between ...

Five arginine-utilizing, nonglycolytic Mycoplasma species were compared serologically by two dimensional immunoelectrophoresis. The survey included: Mycoplasma hominis, Mycoplasma arthritidis, Mycoplasma gateae, Mycoplasma gallinarum, and three strains of Mycoplasma arginini. Although the M. arginini strains showed strong cross-reactions, each strain produced a different antigenic profile which...

We compared male-reproductive-tract polypeptides of Drosophila melanogaster and D. simulans by using two-dimensional gel electrophoresis. Approximately 64% of male-reproductive-tract polypeptides were identical between two randomly chosen isofemale lines from these two species, compared with 83% identity for third-instar imaginal wing-disc polypeptides. Qualitatively similar differences were fo...

Two Azotobacter vinelandii strains capable of growing on N2(Nif+) were isolated from two different mutant strains that lacked dinitrogenase activity (Nif-). Extracts of N2-grown cells of the two Nif+ strains lacked significant amounts of the "conventional" dinitrogenase protein subunits, as determined by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis. Instead, the extracts contained at least four new prot...

A population of Escherichia coli initiated with a single clone developed extensive morphological and physiological polymorphism after being maintained for 773 generations in glucose-limited continuous culture. To understand the mechanisms of adaptation to this environment, total protein patterns of four adaptive clones and of the parent strains were examined by two-dimensional gel electrophores...

We developed maximum clique-based algorithms for spot matching for two-dimensional gel electrophoresis images, protein structure alignment and protein side-chain packing, where these problems are known to be NP-hard. Algorithms based on direct reductions to the maximum clique can find optimal solutions for instances of size (the number of points or residues) up to 50-150 using a standard PC. We...

Web-based collaboration is becoming increasingly common. Often such collaboration exhibits emergent characteristics, for which systems based on a notion of workspaces provide suitable support. Virtual teams collaborating in this manner create virtual organizational structures, the capture and retention of which into organizational memory promises to be of benefit, as it can facilitate reuse. Vi...