Cytomegalovirus infection during pregnancy: cross-sectional survey of knowledge and prevention practices of healthcare professionals in French-speaking Switzerland.

Background: Lack of Cytomegalovirus (CMV) knowledge among healthcare professionals has been proven to be the main threat to pregnant women's awareness, preventing them from reducing the risk of infection. The aims of this study were to assess the knowledge and practices of French-speaking Swiss perinatal professionals in terms of CMV prevention, as well as the sociodemographic-professional factors that influence them.

Methods: This observational study used a cross-sectional design to collect data-via an anonymous electronic questionnaire in French distributed to gynecologists-obstetricians, general practitioners and midwives via various channels: e-mails and social networks of partner centers, professional associations, and conferences.

The role of sFlt1/PlGF ratio in the assessment of preeclampsia and pregnancy-related hypertensive disorders.

Preeclampsia is a major cause of maternal and fetal morbidity and mortality. Early recognition of the disease may be challenging. Complications may precede the onset of clinical symptoms and medical intervention is often delayed.

[Clinical value of angiogenic and anti-angiogenic marker assay in preeclampsia].

Preeclampsia is a disease which originates in the placenta and is specific to human pregnancy. It is one of the main causes of maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality. The introduction of assays for angiogenic and anti-angiogenic markers reflecting placental dysfunction, which lies at the root of preeclampsia, is a turning point in the management of women with suspected preeclampsia or with an atypical form of the disease.

Growth-dependent recombinant product formation kinetics can be reproduced through engineering of glucose transport and is prone to phenotypic heterogeneity.

Background: Escherichia coli W3110 and a group of six isogenic derivatives, each displaying distinct specific rates of glucose consumption were characterized to determine levels of GFP production and population heterogeneity. These strains have single or combinatory deletions in genes encoding phosphoenolpyruvate:sugar phosphotransferase system (PTS) permeases as PtsG and ManX, as well as common components EI, Hpr protein and EIIA, also the non-PTS Mgl galactose/glucose ABC transporter. They have been transformed for expressing GFP based on a lac-based expression vector, which is subject to bistability.

Taking control over microbial populations: Current approaches for exploiting biological noise in bioprocesses.

Phenotypic plasticity of microbial cells has attracted much attention and several research efforts have been dedicated to the description of methods aiming at characterizing phenotypic heterogeneity and its impact on microbial populations. However, different approaches have also been suggested in order to take benefit from noise in a bioprocess perspective, e.g.

Phenotypic variability in bioprocessing conditions can be tracked on the basis of on-line flow cytometry and fits to a scaling law.

Noise in gene and protein expression is a major cause for bioprocess deviation. However, this phenomenon has been only scarcely considered in real bioprocessing conditions. In this work, a scaling-law derived from genome-scale studies based on GFP reporter systems has been calibrated to an on-line flow cytometry device, allowing thus to get an insight at the level of promoter activity and associated noise during a whole microbial culture carried out in bioreactor.