Automatic noninvasive measurement of systolic blood pressure using photoplethysmography

Background  

Automatic measurement of arterial blood pressure is important, but the available commercial automatic blood pressure meters, mostly based on oscillometry, are of low accuracy.     

Peptide length requirement for experimental allergic encephalomyelitis in guinea pigs

Three peptides overlapping the tryptophan region of bovine CNS myelin basic protein were synthesized by the solid phase procedure of Merrifield. These were the nonapeptide H-Phe-Ser-Trp-Gly-Ala-Glu-Gly-Gln-Lys-OH, the octapeptide H-Ser-Trp-Gly-Ala-Glu-Gly-Gln-Lys-OH, and the heptapeptide H-Trp-Gly-Ala-Glu-Gly-Gln-Lys-OH. They were tested for encephalitogenic activity in guinea pigs with either Freund's complete adjuvant containing M. tuberculosis or muramyl dipeptide in incomplete Freund's adjuvant at doses of 10 microgram per animal. The results show that deletion of one or two residues from the amino-terminal end of the nonapeptide destroyed the ability of the shorter peptides to induce clinical but not histological signs of EAE.     

Improved Bacterial Detection Using Immobilized Acyl-Lysyl Oligomers

The global need to improve bacterial detection in liquid media has motivated multidisciplinary research efforts toward developing new approaches that overcome the shortcomings of traditional techniques. We recently proposed the use of oligomers of acylated lysyls (OAKs) in their resin-linked form (ROAKs) for the efficient, robust, and inexpensive filtration of bacteria. Here, to investigate the potential for the use of ROAKs in downstream applications, we first examined the capacity of ROAKs to capture bacteria as a function of environmental conditions and structure-activity relationships (SARs). We next assessed their ability to release the captured bacteria and then combined both abilities to improve real-time PCR outcomes. ROAKs were able to deplete liquid samples of bacterial content after incubation or continuous flow, illustrating the efficient capture of different bacterial species under a wide range of ionic strength and pH conditions. We also show circumstances for the significant release of captured bacteria, live or dead, for further analysis. Finally, the SAR study revealed a shorter ROAK derivative exhibiting a capture capacity similar to that of the parent construct but the increased recovery of ROAK-bound bacteria, enabling improvement of the detection sensitivity by 20-fold. Collectively, the data support the potential usefulness of a simple, robust, and efficient approach for rapid capture/analysis of bacteria from tap water and, possibly, from more complex media.