Erythrocyte selenium concentration as a marker of selenium status.

Background & Aims: Plasma selenium concentration and glutathione peroxidase (GPx) activity are commonly used as markers of selenium nutritional status. However, plasma selenium concentrations fall independently of selenium status during the acute phase response and GPx is analytically problematic. The assay for erythrocyte selenium is robust and concentrations are unaffected by the systemic inflammatory response.

Enzymatic synthesis of peptides on a solid support.

We have previously shown that dipeptides can be synthesised in high yields from amino acids using protease catalysis in aqueous media, if the amino component is immobilised on porous PEGA resin (a copolymer of polyethylene glycol and polyacrylamide). Here we explore the scope of this methodology for using protected and glycosylated amino acids as well as the synthesis of longer peptides on resin and show that such a method can also be applied on non-porous surfaces, in particular on gold.