The year 2005 marks the 100th anniversary of Robert Koch's Nobel Prize. Here, we describe the scientific career of Robert Koch, the discoverer of the etiologic agent of tuberculosis but also of those of anthrax, cholera and wound infections. Equally important, Koch developed the methodologies and concepts that made medical microbiology a scientific discipline. Despite great efforts, however, Ko...

Description A perennial herb with a subterranean, digitately branched rhizome producing stems up to 1.50 m in height with linear lanceolate sheating leaves (5-30 cm long and 8-20 mm wide) that are alternate, smooth and pale green. Flower stems shorter than leaf stems and bearing a few flowers, each surrounded by a thin bract and situated in axils of large greenish yellow obtuse bracts, which ar...

In the preceding invest,igations (1, 2) the rate of turnover of lipids was found to be slower in the brain of adult rats than in other organs (liver and intestine) studied for comparison. In this investigation lipid metabolism was studied during the time of its greatest activity in nervous tissue-the period known to morphologists as that of myelination. The process of myelination has been littl...

Exotic plant species can threaten closely related native congeners through asymmetric hybridization and subsequent backcrossing, the process known as genetic assimilation. I explore the initial stages of this process in Taraxacum ceratophorum (Asteraceae), the native alpine dandelion, and the invasive apomict T. officinale. In central Colorado, seven T. ceratophorum populations all occur in sym...

Dendrobium officinale is an endangered orchid from southeast Asia that is known for its medicinal properties in traditional Chinese medicine. We constructed an integrated genetic linkage map of an F(1) population derived from an interspecific cross between D. officinale and D. aduncum (both, 2n = 38), using expressed sequence tag-simple sequence repeats (EST-SSR) and sequence-related amplified ...

OBJECTIVE Hyperlipidemia is a known complication of diabetes mellitus and predisposes to coronary heart disease. The lowering of total cholesterol and low density lipoprotein (LDL)-cholesterol should reduce the incidence of coronary disease. The aim of the present study was to examine the antihyperlipidemic and antidiabetic effects of the hydroalcoholic extract of watercress (Nasturtium officin...

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to assay the antifungal activity of selected essential oils obtained from plants against both fluconazole (FLU)-resistant and FLU-susceptible C. albicans strains isolated from HIV positive patients with oropharyngeal candidiasis (OPC). MATERIALS AND METHODS The essential oils were obtained by hydrodistillation method from Myrtus communis (My. communis),...