Epidemiological serosurvey of hepatitis B virus among children aged 1-14 years in Guangdong Province, China.

Objective: A cross-sectional community prevalence survey was conducted to investigate the sero-epidemiological features of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection among children aged 1-14 years in Guangdong Province in 2013, and to provide baseline data for the evaluation of HBV disease burden and the impacts of HBV control.

Methods: A total of 2765 children aged 1-14 years from 16 villages/streets of eight cities in Guangdong Province were recruited as subjects. A blood sample was obtained from each subject.

Isolation and functional analysis of the promoter of the amphioxus Hsp70a gene.

Amphioxus is a promising laboratorial model animal for studying the evolutionary and developmental mechanisms that appeared during the invertebrate-chordate to vertebrate transition. However, the main drawback for the use of amphioxus as a model organism is the lack of well-developed technical approaches. Conditional gene expression, as performed with thermal control, is a very useful strategy in gene function studies.