The species-specific primer set designed from the plasma membrane ATPase gene of E.astragali can detect the pathogen. This assay could be applied in the standing milk vetch seed industry.”
“Pharmaceutical development and manufacturing process optimization work was undertaken in order to propose a potential paediatric rectal formulation of azithromycin as an alternative to existing oral or injectable formulations. The target product profile was to be easy-to-use, cheap and stable in Etomoxir concentration tropical conditions, with bioavailability comparable to oral forms, rapidly achieving

and maintaining bactericidal concentrations. PEG solid solution suppositories were characterized in vitro using visual, HPLC, DSC, FTIR and XRD analyses. In vitro drug release and in vivo bioavailability were assessed; a study in rabbits compared the bioavailability of the optimized solid solution suppository to rectal solution and intravenous product (as reference) and to the previous, non-optimized formulation (suspended azithromycin suppository). The bioavailability of azithromycin administered as solid solution suppositories relative to intra-venous was 43%, which compared well to the target of 38% (oral product in humans). The results of 3-month preliminary see more stability and feasibility studies were consistent with industrial production scale-up. This product has potential both as a classical antibiotic

and as a product for use in severely ill children in rural areas. Industrial partners for further development are being sought. (C) 2012 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.”
“Macromolecular crowding has a profound effect upon biochemical processes in the cell. We have computationally studied the effect of crowding upon protein folding for 12 small domains in a simulated cell using a coarse-grained protein model, which is based upon Langevin dynamics, designed to unify the often disjoint goals of protein folding simulation and structure prediction. The DMXAA chemical structure model can make predictions of native conformation with accuracy comparable with that

of the best current template-free models. It is fast enough to enable a more extensive analysis of crowding than previously attempted, studying several proteins at many crowding levels and further random repetitions designed to more closely approximate the ensemble of conformations. We found that when crowding approaches 40% excluded volume, the maximum level found in the cell, proteins fold to fewer native-like states. Notably, when crowding is increased beyond this level, there is a sudden failure of protein folding: proteins fix upon a structure more quickly and become trapped in extended conformations. These results suggest that the ability of small protein domains to fold without the help of chaperones may be an important factor in limiting the degree of macromolecular crowding in the cell.