Characterization of Nipah virus infection in a model of human airway epithelial cells cultured at an air-liquid interface.

Nipah virus (NiV) is an emerging paramyxovirus that can cause lethal respiratory illness in humans. No vaccine/therapeutic is currently licensed for humans. Human-to-human transmission was previously reported during outbreaks and NiV could be isolated from respiratory secretions, but the proportion of cases in Malaysia exhibiting respiratory symptoms was significantly lower than that in Bangladesh.

Photokinetic Drug Delivery: Light-Enhanced Permeation in an In Vitro Eye Model.

Purpose: To investigate light-enhanced molecular movement as a potential technology for drug delivery. To do this, we developed an in vitro eye model while representing similar concentration gradient conditions and compositions found in the eye.

Methods: The eye model unit was fabricated by inserting a cross-linked type I collagen membrane in a spectrophotometer cuvette with 1% hyaluronic acid as the drug recipient medium.

Ultrastructural evidence of the ehrlichial developmental cycle in naturally infected Ixodes persulcatus ticks in the course of coinfection with Rickettsia, Borrelia, and a flavivirus.

Ehrlichiae are small gram-negative obligately intracellular bacteria that multiply within vacuoles of their host cells and are associated for a part of their life cycle with ticks, which serve as vectors for vertebrate hosts. Two morphologically and physiologically different ehrlichial cell types, reticulate cells (RC) and dense-cored cells (DC), are observed during experimental infection of cell cultures, mice, and ticks. Dense-cored cells and reticulate cells in vertebrate cell lines alternate in a developmental cycle.

Volume density and distribution of mitochondria in harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) skeletal muscle.

Recent studies have shown that harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) have an increased skeletal muscle mitochondrial volume density that may be an adaptation for maintaining aerobic metabolism during diving. However, these studies were based on single samples taken from locomotory muscles. In this study, we took multiple samples from a transverse section of the epaxial (primary locomotory) muscles and single samples from the m.