Pharmacist-led program to improve transitions from acute care to skilled nursing facility care.

Purpose: A pharmacist-led process to improve medication management in transitions from acute care to skilled nursing facility (SNF) care is described.

Summary: The process of transitioning patients from an acute care facility to a SNF involves multiple steps, with the potential for delays in medication administration. As part of a health system's effort to evaluate barriers to timely first-dose administration after hospital-to-SNF transfers, a multidisciplinary team was tasked with defining the frequency of missed doses of high-risk medications and identifying reasons for medication administration delays.

2,3 Butanediol production in an obligate photoautotrophic cyanobacterium in dark conditions via diverse sugar consumption.

Cyanobacteria are under investigation as a means to utilize light energy to directly recycle CO2 into chemical compounds currently derived from petroleum. Any large-scale photosynthetic production scheme must rely on natural sunlight for energy, thereby limiting production time to only lighted hours during the day. Here, an obligate photoautotrophic cyanobacterium was engineered for enhanced production of 2,3-butanediol (23BD) in continuous light, 12h:12h light-dark diurnal, and continuous dark conditions via supplementation with glucose or xylose.

Engineering Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7942 for continuous growth under diurnal conditions.

Synechococcus elongatus strain PCC 7942 strictly depends upon the generation of photosynthetically derived energy for growth and is incapable of biomass increase in the absence of light energy. Obligate phototrophs' core metabolism is very similar to that of heterotrophic counterparts exhibiting diverse trophic behavior. Most characterized cyanobacterial species are obligate photoautotrophs under examined conditions.

Alternative biofuel production in non-natural hosts.

Global energy and environmental concerns have stimulated increased efforts in synthesizing petroleum-derived products from renewable resources. Biological production of metabolites for fuel is increasingly becoming a feasible, renewable, environmentally sound alternative. However, many of these chemicals are not highly produced in any known native organism.