There is growing interest in genetically expressed reporters for in vivo studies of bacterial colonization in the context of infectious disease research, studies of the bacterial microbiome or cancer imaging and treatment. To empower non-invasive high-resolution bacterial tracking with deep tissue penetration, we herein use the genetically controlled biosynthesis of the deep-purple pigment Viol...

Designing hybrid proteins is a major aspect of protein engineering and covers a very wide range of applications from basic research to medical applications. This review focuses on the use of class A β-lactamases as versatile scaffolds to design hybrid enzymes (referred to as β-lactamase hybrid proteins, BHPs) in which an exogenous peptide, protein or fragment thereof is inserted at various perm...

Automatic facial expression measurement systems have been under development since the early 1990ʼs. The early attempts worked well in highly controlled conditions, but failed for spontaneous expressions, and real application environments. Automatic facial expression recognition has now advanced to the point that we are able to apply it to spontaneous expressions. These systems extract a suffici...

Metabolic networks consist of linked functional components, or modules. The mechanism underlying metabolic network modularity is of great interest not only to researchers of basic science but also to those in fields of engineering. Previous studies have suggested a theoretical model, which proposes that a change in the evolutionary goal (system-specific purpose) increases network modularity, an...

Total protein content is a measurement common to many applications in basic science and clinical research. Several different fluorescent techniques are available that eliminate many of the problems associated with the traditional absorbance-based colorimetric methods to measure total protein content. Here we describe the use of the compound o-phthaldialdehyde (OPA) to quantitate total protein u...

SUMMARY Numerous clinical and basic science-related innovations have been presented at the Canadian Surgery Forum (CSF). We sought to define changes in both the content and methodology of the CSF scientific program over the past decade. While the total volume of CSF abstract presentations has increased dramatically, the methodological quality has remained static, with few randomized trials and ...

Since Stephen Paget’s “seed-and-soil” theory was published in 1889, a wealth of research has focused on the cascade of events involved in the spread of cancer cells from the primary tumor to secondary organs. As Paget highlighted, in addition to the intrinsic properties of metastatic cancer cells, features of the microenvironment in target organs of metastasis are also critical for successful t...