SARS-CoV-2 Surveillance of Wild Mice and Rats in North American Cities.

From July 2020 to June 2021, 248 wild house mice (Mus musculus), deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus), brown rats (Rattus norvegicus), and black rats (Rattus rattus) from Texas and Washington, USA, and British Columbia, Canada, were tested for SARS-CoV-2 exposure and infection. Two brown rats and 11 house mice were positive for neutralizing antibodies using a surrogate virus neutralization test, but negative or indeterminate with the Multiplexed Fluorometric ImmunoAssay COVID-Plex, which targets full-length spike and nuclear proteins. Oro-nasopharyngeal swabs and fecal samples tested negative by RT-qPCR, with an indeterminate fecal sample in one house mouse.

A phylogenetic and taxonomic review of baviine jumping spiders (Araneae, Salticidae, Baviini).

The systematics and taxonomy of the tropical Asian jumping spiders of the tribe Baviini is reviewed, with a molecular phylogenetic study (UCE sequence capture, traditional Sanger sequencing) guiding a reclassification of the group's genera. The well-studied members of the group are placed into six genera: Simon, 1877, Caleb & Sankaran, 2019, Simon, 1901, Thorell, 1895, Simon, 1885, and one new genus, Maddison, The identity of is clarified, and Kanesharatnam & Benjamin, 2018 synonymized with it. Strand, 1911 is synonymized with .

Evaluation of laser diode thermal desorption (LDTD) coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) for support of in vitro drug discovery assays: increasing scope, robustness and throughput of the LDTD technique for use with chemically diverse compound libraries.

Within the drug discovery environment, the key process in optimising the chemistry of a structural series toward a potential drug candidate is the design, make and test cycle, in which the primary screens consist of a number of in vitro assays, including metabolic stability, cytochrome P450 inhibition, and time-dependent inhibition assays. These assays are often carried out using multiple drug compounds with chemically diverse structural features, often in a 96 well-plate format for maximum time-efficiency, and are supported using rapid liquid chromatographic (LC) sample introduction with a tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) selected reaction monitoring (SRM) endpoint, taking around 6.5 h per plate.

Silver and gold nanoparticles in plants: sites for the reduction to metal.

Induced formation of metal nanoparticles in living plants is poorly understood. The sites for the reduction of Ag(+) and Au(3+) to Ag(0) and Au(0) metal nanoparticles in vivo in plants were investigated in order to better understand the mechanism of the reduction processes. Brassica juncea was grown hydroponically, followed by growth in solutions of AgNO(3), [Ag(NH(3))(2)]NO(3) or HAuCl(4).