Screening for Down's syndrome using serum alpha fetoprotein: a retrospective study indicating caution.

A report was made on the outcome of a four year retrospective study in 27 064 pregnancies, of the clinical efficiency, sensitivity, and specificity of a screening programme for Down''s syndrome based on reported strategies related to the measurement of maternal serum alpha fetoprotein. This study identified 27 pregnancies affected by Down''s syndrome with a median multiple of the median maternal serum alpha fetoprotein concentration of 0.82. This figure is considerably higher than that obtained from previous reports on this subject. With an age related multiple of the median maternal serum alpha fetoprotein strategy, 30.8% of Down''s affected pregnancies were identified as well as 11.6% of unaffected pregnancies. Perhaps a United Kingdom collaborative study should begin to investigate the reasons for such wide population variance in the reports for the median multiple of the median for Down''s affected pregnancies. Until such studies are carried out, screening for Down''s syndrome based on low maternal serum alpha fetoprotein concentration is premature.     

Modulation of slow and fast elbow extensor EMG tonic activity by stretch reflexes in man

Reflex EMG responses to sudden passive flexion of the elbow were recorded from anconeus and triceps brachii in 5 human volunteers. While the subjects were required not to resist the flexion movement, they were required to maintain an extension torque of 3.5 or 7.0 Nm prior to its onset. Under these isotonic conditions, the latency and amplitude of the reflex activities from anconeus and triceps brachii did not differ significantly, in contrast to the findings of Le Bozec (1986) in actively relaxed subjects. The myotatic/postmyotatic EMG amplitude ratio did not provide a further quantitative way to distinguish between these muscles. The absence of a difference between the reflex activities of a slow (anconeus) and a fast (triceps brachii) muscle is interpreted as resulting from a strong drive of spindle activity on the whole extensor motoneuron pool, which outweights the differences in recruitment due to the differing relative amounts of type I and type II fibres in the two muscles. Differences like those described between finger and calf muscles by other authors are thought to be due to the relative degree of corticalization of these muscles. All short and long latency responses of the muscles increased in magnitude and decreased in latency with increasing background EMG activity as well as with increasing initial length. The position and tonic activity dependency of these responses is explained in terms of alpha-gamma coactivation.     

Phage P1 Cre-loxP site-specific recombination. Effects of DNA supercoiling on catenation and knotting of recombinant products

Bacteriophage P1 contains a site-specific recombination system consisting of a site, loxP, and a recombinase protein Cre. We have shown that with purified Cre protein we can carry out recombination between two loxP sites in vitro. When that recombination occurs between two sites in direct orientation on the same DNA molecule, we observed the production of free and catenated circular molecules. In this paper we show that recombination between sites in opposite orientation leads to both knotted and unknotted circular products. We also demonstrate that the production of catenanes and knots is influenced by two factors: (1) supercoiling in the DNA substrate, supercoiled DNA substrates yield significantly more catenated and knotted products than nicked circular substrates; and (2) mutations in the loxP site, a class of mutations have been isolated that carry out recombination but result in a distribution of products in which the ratio of catenanes to free circles is increased over that observed with a wild-type site. A more detailed analysis of the products from recombination between wild-type sites indicates: (1) that the catenanes or knots produced by recombination are both simple and complex; (2) that the ratio of free products to catenanes is independent of the distance between the two directly repeated loxP sites; and (3) that for DNA substrates with four loxP sites significant recombination between non-adjacent sites occurs to give free circular products. These observations provide insights into how two loxP sites are brought together during recombination.     

Reversible covalent immobilization of ligands and proteins on polyacrylamide gels

Ligands and proteins were covalently but reversibly immobilized on polyacrylamide gels using novel acrylic monomers whose syntheses are reported here. These reagents have an acrylyl group at one end for copolymerization into gels, an N-succinimidyl ester at the other allowing rapid immobilization of molecules having an available primary amino group, and a cleavable disulfide bond in the middle. Two immobilization methods were developed using these reagents. In the first method, a ligand with a primary amino group was treated with the immobilization reagent in anhydrous ethanol and the resulting amide derivative was purified and copolymerized with acrylamide and bisacrylamide resulting in the desired reversible immobilization. In the second method, the immobilization reagents (at densities up to 50 mumol/ml) were directly copolymerized with acrylamide and bisacrylamide to form activated gels of the desired shape and porosity. Proteins or other ligands in aqueous buffers were then added to the activated gels resulting in their covalent immobilization. Ligands or proteins immobilized using the methods reported here remained stably bound even when gels were subjected to boiling in detergents or high-ionic-strength buffers. Immobilized ligands were readily released (greater than 97%) from gels by treatment with quantitative amounts of aqueous dithiothreitol (DTT) under mild conditions. Immobilized proteins were also released (up to 87%) from the gels by DTT treatment. Small ligands (e.g., aminohexyl glycosides), active enzymes, and glycoproteins were immobilized, and then recovered, using these reagents.     

Developmental delays in exploration and locomotor activity in male rats exposed to low level lead

Delays in the development of exploratory and locomotor behavior in neonatal male rats (up to 21 days of age) are shown to accrue as a consequence of low level lead exposure. Cross fostering experiments indicate that these delays are primarily due to prenatal exposure. These Pb induced behavioral modifications appear to be associated with the delays in synaptogenesis and biochemical development of the cerebral cortex reported previously (4, 18). A new behavioral bioassay for detecting delays in brain development is described.