[The role of virological tests in the diagnosis of cytomegalovirus infection in pregnant women].

Introduction: The most harmful and most frequent foetal agent is cytomegalovirus. The progress in diagnostic tools and therapeutic opportunities opened new perspectives in the diagnosis and management of foetal cytomegalovirus infection.

Aim: Evaluation of cytomegalovirus virological test results performed during pregnancy between 2007 and 2012.

Engineering a thermoregulated intein-modified xylanase into maize for consolidated lignocellulosic biomass processing.

Plant cellulosic biomass is an abundant, low-cost feedstock for producing biofuels and chemicals. Expressing cell wall-degrading (CWD) enzymes (e.g.

A predictive model of intein insertion site for use in the engineering of molecular switches.

Inteins are intervening protein domains with self-splicing ability that can be used as molecular switches to control activity of their host protein. Successfully engineering an intein into a host protein requires identifying an insertion site that permits intein insertion and splicing while allowing for proper folding of the mature protein post-splicing. By analyzing sequence and structure based properties of native intein insertion sites we have identified four features that showed significant correlation with the location of the intein insertion sites, and therefore may be useful in predicting insertion sites in other proteins that provide native-like intein function.

A pressure-controlled rat ventilator with electronically preset respirations.

Major experimental surgery on laboratory animals requires adequate anesthesia and ventilation to keep the animal alive throughout the procedure. A ventilator is a machine that helps the anesthesized animal breathe through an endotracheal tube by pumping a volume of gas (oxygen, air, or other gaseous mixtures), comparable with the normal tidal volume, into the animal's lungs. There are two main categories of ventilators for small laboratory rodents: volume-controlled and pressure-controlled ones.

MAX1, a regulator of the flavonoid pathway, controls vegetative axillary bud outgrowth in Arabidopsis.

We show that MAX1, a specific repressor of vegetative axillary bud outgrowth in Arabidopsis, acts a positive regulator of the flavonoid pathway, including 11 structural genes and the transcription factor An2. Repression of bud outgrowth requires MAX1-dependent flavonoid gene expression. As the flavonoidless state leads to lateral outgrowth in Arabidopsis, our data suggest that a flavonoid-based mechanism regulates axillary bud outgrowth and that this mechanism is under the control of MAX1.