The hugely welcome government-led initiative to pro-actively offer 'opt-out' HIV testing to patients at its clinics and hospitals needs hefty back-up resources to ensure patient retention and earlier presentation.

If you are employed in a biomedical laboratory, it is likely that you have worked with HeLa cells. Dependable and hardy, these cells have been used for all manner of scientific research: They’ve been shot into space, exposed to radiation, and treated with cocktails of steroids, hormones, cosmetics, and infectious agents. They were used to develop the polio vaccine, visualize and analyze chromos...

1,2,3,4-Tetrahydroisoquinoline (TIQ) has been reported to occur in human brain, with its content being 10-fold higher in the brain of a patient with Parkinson's disease (PD) than in that of a control subject. This congener of the neurotoxin 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP) could be formed in brain by the condensation of phenylethylamine with metabolically formed formaldehyde....

Extracts and tissue culture supernatants of axenic forms of T. rangeli were assayed for the presence of sialidase and trans-sialidase activities. Using sialyl(alpha 2-3)lactose, sialyl(alpha 2-6)lactose, poly(alpha 2-8)N-acetylneuraminic acid, fetuin and 4-methylumbelliferyl-N-acetylneuraminic acid as sialic acid donors, and lactose as a sialic acid acceptor, no trans-sialidase activity was det...

Lung morphogenesis requires precise coordination between branching morphogenesis and vascularization to generate distal airways capable of supporting respiration at the cell-cell interface. The specific origins and types of blood vessels that initially form in the lung, however, remain obscure. Herein, we definitively show that during the early phases of lung development [i.e., embryonic day (E...

AIM To determine the prevalence of esophageal squamous papillomas (ESPs) in a tertiary teaching hospital and to assess for any clinical associations, including relations with esophageal squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs). METHODS Data from a total of 6962 upper gastrointestinal endoscopies over a five year period were retrospectively obtained and analysed. RESULTS ESP was found in sixteen pati...

TonB-gated transporters have beta-barrels containing an amino-terminal globular domain that occludes the interior of the barrel. Mutations in the globular domain prevent transport of ligands across the outer membrane. Surprisingly, FepA with deletions of the globular domain (amino acids 3 to 150 and 17 to 150) was previously reported to retain significant sensitivity to colicins B and D and to ...