The latest influenza A (H1N1) pandemic attracted worldwide attention and called for the urgent development of novel antiviral drugs. Here, seven tripeptides are designed and explored as neuraminidase (NA) inhibitors on the structural basis of known inhibitors. Their interactions with NA are studied and compared with each other, using flexible docking and molecular dynamics simulations. The vari...

BACKGROUND In 2007, a US Air Force training facility reported a cluster of severe respiratory illnesses associated with a rare human adenovirus (Ad) serotype, Ad14. We investigated this outbreak to better understand its epidemiology, clinical spectrum, and associated risk factors. METHODS Data were collected from ongoing febrile respiratory illness (FRI) surveillance and from a retrospective ...

Protein-nucleic acid complexes are important for many cellular processes including the most essential functions such as transcription and translation. For many protein-nucleic acid complexes, flexibility of both macromolecules has been shown to be critical for specificity and/or function. The flexibility-rigidity index (FRI) has been proposed as an accurate and efficient approach for protein fl...

We know how the hepatitis A virus (HAV) is spread, but foodborne enteric viruses remain a difficult problem to control. An outbreak affecting 153 schoolchildren and staff in Michigan this spring emphasizes the need for continued vigilance. The frozen strawberries implicated in this outbreak were grown in Mexico and then packaged in a California plant before being distributed to schools (1). The...

due to timely process of wto negotiations, unwillingness of advanced industrial countries to give concessions to developing economies regarding tariff and non-tariff barriers on agricultural commodity imports, the ongoing initiatives in northern hemisphere to establish new and wider free trading areas which will divert trade out of the market from asian countries, and ineffectiveness of deepeni...