PURPOSE This study examines the effect of the L-type calcium channel blocker verapamil on mechanical strain-induced extracellular matrix genes in optic nerve head lamina cribrosa (LC) cells. METHODS Changes in LC cell intracellular calcium [Ca(2+)]i following hypotonic cell membrane stretch were measured with the fluorescent probe fura-2/AM. Fluorescence intensity was measured, after labellin...

Specific DNA fragments of human cytomegalovirus strain Towne exhibited sequence homology to the transforming regions of herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) when examined by nitrocellulose filter hybridization under nonstringent conditions. Cloned Towne Xba I fragments B and C were homologous to both Bgl II transforming fragments N and C of HSV-2 DNA, whereas cloned Towne Xba I fragment E was un...

OBJECTIVE From October 1996 to March 1997, a cluster of 11 cases of neonatal sepsis caused by Enterobacter cloacae with similar antimicrobial susceptibility patterns occurred in a neonatal intensive care unit. This outbreak prompted an investigation. METHOD Twelve isolates obtained from 6 neonatal patients who developed E cloacae sepsis during the outbreak were analyzed. Four E cloacae isolat...

Magnetotactic bacteria have the potential to execute nontrivial tasks, such as microactuation, micromanipulation, and microassembly, under the influence of the controlled magnetic fields. Closed-loop control characteristics of these magnetic microorganisms depend on their self-propulsion forces (motility) and magnetic dipole moments. These properties can be controlled through the growth conditi...

BACKGROUND Between November 2011 and November 2012, a Canadian village of 933 persons had 50 culture-positive cases of tuberculosis, with 49 sharing the same genotype. METHODS We performed Illumina-based whole-genome sequencing on Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates from this village, during and before the outbreak. Phylogenetic trees were generated using the maximum likelihood method. RESU...

As the senior author of Quattrocchi et al. (1), I have attempted to reproduce the major findings described in this report in my laboratory, and to reconcile them with the findings of Bidoia et al. (2). Toward this end, I have reanalyzed the neuromuscular junction in the original reeler strain used for our study, and provided the mice to Misgeld, Lichtman, and Sanes [St. Louis, MO (2)] to rule o...

A feasibility study was conducted to evaluate the capability of bacterial strains to degrade crude oil under in vitro conditions. Pseudomonas strain PS-I could degrade alkanes (70.69%) and aromatics (45.37%). Alkanes and aromatic fractions separated by column chromatography were analyzed by gas chromatography. In case of Pseudomonas strain PS-I, nC17/Pr, nC18/Ph ratios decreased from 2.5100 to ...

Outbred mastomys [Praomys (mastomys) coucha], were examined at 15 chromosomal loci encoding proteins and enzymes using cellulose acetate electrophoresis (CAE) to establish protein polymorphisms and allelic patterns. Protein polymorphisms were found in five protein biochemical markers (Akp-I, Ce-2, Idh-I, Pgm-I and Trf-I), As a result, inter species genetic variations in terms of observed hetero...