A strate y for the modular construction of synthetic protein mimics base% on the ability of non-protein amino acids to act as stereochemical directors of polypeptide chain folding, is described. The use of d-aminoisobutyric acid (Aib) to construct stereochemically rigid helices is exemplified by crystallographic and spectroscopic studies of several apolar peptides, ranging in len th from seven ...

1. Schneider H, Blaauw D, Dartnall E, et al. STD care in the South African private health sector. S Afr Med J 2001; 91: 151-156. 2. Connolly AM, Wilkinson D, Harrison A, Lurie M, Abdool Karim SS. Inadequate treatment for sexually transmitted diseases in the South African private health sector. Int J STD AIDS 1999; 10: 324-327. 3. Chabikuli N, Schneider H, Blaauw D, et al. Equity in the provisio...

It is therefore very important to optimise the care of diabetic patients at primary, secondary and tertiary care level. Numerous clinical practice guidelines for management of diabetes have been compiled and circulated to health care workers, but despite this the level of diabetes care is still not ideal because of suboptimal implementation strategies. Guideline implementation problems are a si...

782 It is estimated that half or more of sexually transmitted infection (STI) care episodes in the South African formal health sector are treated by private general practitioners (GPs). Poorquality STI care has been well documented in this setting and has been the subject of some debate and policy responses. In the Department of Health’s HIV/AIDS and STD Strategic Plan for 2000 2005, the first ...

October 2005, Vol. 95, No. 10 SAMJ Great strides were made during the last century in the management of diabetes in pregnancy. Before the discovery of insulin in 1921 the outlook for the diabetic mother and her fetus was abysmal. With the advent of insulin, an emphasis on a team approach to care, improved methods of fetal surveillance, and a focus on metabolic normalisation brought about by int...

DomCut is a program to predict inter-domain linker regions solely by amino acid sequence information. The prediction is made by using linker index deduced from a data set of domain/linker segments. The linker preference profile, which is the averaged linker index along a sequence, can be visualized in the graphical interface.

UNLABELLED Regulatory peptides and their analogs are being extensively investigated as radiopharmaceuticals for cancer imaging and therapy. Receptors of the cholecystokinin family have been shown to be overexpressed in different types of neuroendocrine tumors. The purposes of this study were to evaluate the cholecystokinin octapeptide amide (CCK8) peptide tagged with a diethylenetriaminepentaac...

Great strides were made during the last century in the management of diabetes in pregnancy. Before the discovery of insulin in 1921 the outlook for the diabetic mother and her fetus was abysmal. With the advent of insulin, an emphasis on a team approach to care, improved methods of fetal surveillance, and a focus on metabolic normalisation brought about by intensive insulin regimens and home gl...

November 2005, Vol. 95, No. 11 SAMJ Uncertainty as to the cause or causes of sudden and unexpected infant death and difficulty in excluding the possibility of infanticide, even after the performance of a ‘complete’ autopsy, was graphically illustrated in the London courts recently. A mother wrongly convicted of killing her two sons had her conviction quashed, and the eminent paediatrician who h...