We determined characteristics of Salmonella enterica pulsed-field gel electrophoresis clusters that predict their being solved (i.e., that result in identification of a confirmed outbreak). Clusters were investigated by the Minnesota Department of Health by using a dynamic iterative model. During 2001-2007, a total of 43 (12.5%) of 344 clusters were solved. Clusters of ≥4 isolates were more lik...

Cell polarity can be influenced by an electric field, but the mechanisms behind this response are poorly understood. A new paper shows that fission yeast cells change their direction of growth in an external electric field and suggests mechanisms based on the cortical pH gradient and on electrophoresis of membrane proteins.

Electrophoresis is the main metod for separating large polyelectrolyte molecules, primarily used on DNA, in biochemistry and medicine research. An overwiev of the models of physical mechanisms that are behind this phenomena will be presented. The prominent role is taken by reptation mechanisms, by which large ‡exible polyelectrolytes thread their way through the pores of the gel matrix. There a...

The separation of polypeptides by electrophoresis allowed Arne Tiselius to describe protein fractions corresponding to albumin, -, -, and -globulins in serum with the Rrst published diagram of human serum protein electrophoresis in 1939. The number of fractions slowly expanded into electrophoretic subfractions identiRed as 1, 2, 1, 2, 1 and 2. The mobility characteristics of these fractions are...

Polarized fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (pFRAP) has been used to study the internal dynamics of relatively long DNA molecules embedded in gels that range in concentration from 1% to 5% agarose. The data indicate that, even in very congested gels, rapid internal relaxation of DNA is largely unhindered; however, interactions with gel matrices apparently do perturb the larger amplitud...

The discovery that antigen}antibody interaction could be produced not only in liquids, but also on gel media, such as agar or agarose gels, with the formation of insoluble immunoprecipitates, opened the door to the development of the gel diffusion techniques for immunoprecipitation analysis. The Rrst of these techniques, known as double diffusion, was introduced by Ouchterlony in 1948. In this ...