Two recently sequenced genomes of the insect-pathogenic bacterium Photorhabdus and a large Serratia entomophila plasmid, pADAP, have phage-related loci containing putative toxin effector genes, designated the "Photorhabdus virulence cassettes" (PVCs). In S. entomophila, the single plasmid PVC confers antifeeding activity on larvae of a beetle. Here, we show that recombinant Escherichia coli exp...

BACKGROUND There have been few investigations of an association between poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) dust exposure and an increase in lung cancer incidence, and their conclusions have been inconsistent. AIMS To determine whether PVC and/or vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) is the associated risk factor(s), by means of a nested case-referent study, in order to estimate lung cancer risk, avoiding sele...

Bacteria from the Planctomycetes, Verrucomicrobia, and Chlamydiae (PVC) superphylum are exceptions to the otherwise dominant mode of division by binary fission, which is based on the interaction between the FtsZ protein and the peptidoglycan (PG) biosynthesis machinery. Some PVC bacteria are deprived of the FtsZ protein and were also thought to lack PG. How these bacteria divide is still one of...

The Pseudomonas aeruginosa fimbrial structures encoded by the cup gene clusters (cupB and cupC) contribute to its attachment to abiotic surfaces and biofilm formation. The P. aeruginosa pvcABCD gene cluster encodes enzymes that synthesize a novel isonitrile functionalized cumarin, paerucumarin. Paerucumarin has already been characterized chemically, but this is the first report elucidating its ...

Rockwool (RC) and peat are two common substrates used worldwide in horticultural crop production. In recent years environmental and ecological concerns raised the demand for reducing the use of RC and peat. Although coconut coir (CC) has been increasingly used as an alternative to RC and peat, it is still needed to comprehensively evaluate the feasibility of CC before widely used. To meet this ...

To investigate the characteristics of action potentials and their ionic mechanism in cardiomyocytes from rabbit pulmonary vein sleeves (PVC), and to compare them with those in left atrial cardiomyocytes (LAC), the technique of whole-cell patch clamp was applied. We used current-clamp technique to record action potentials, and voltage-clamp technique to record ionic currents. PVC had longer acti...

S everal recent reports,12 and one in this issue (see page 828), have contributed new observations on pulmonary disease in vinyl chloride (VC ) -and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) -exposed patients. Earlier reports, a few even preceding the identification in 1974 of vinyl chloride as a human carcinogen (with hemangiosarcoma of the liver the marker tumor, but most probably not the only tumor), had cen...

We describe herein a polymeric material that prefers to align perpendicular to a stretch-aligned polymer host in the solid state. Poly(iptycene) poly-1 was synthesized from monomer 1 under hyperbaric techniques via a Diels-Alder polymerization. Polarized excitation spectra of the anthracene end groups in this material in a stretch-aligned, solution-cast poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) film showed th...

A novel strategy for detecting Premature Ventricular Contraction (PVC) is proposed and investigated. The strategy employs a Swarm-based Support Vector Machine (SSVM). An SSVM is an SVM optimised by using Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO). The strategy proposes new inputs. The inputs involve the width and the gradient of the electrocardiographic QRS wave. Experiments with different inputs and di...