Can museum egg specimens be used for proteomic analyses?

Background: Mass spectrometry and proteomic analyses have become powerful tools for the analysis of proteins and peptides. Investigation of proteins contained in the various layers of the avian eggshell has focused entirely on domesticated species. It has been widely assumed that this existing research can inform the study of wild bird species despite the fact that the vast majority of the diversity in avian species (~95%) exists outside the Orders to which domestic and poultry species belong.

Tissue engineering of human biliary epithelial cells on polyglycolic acid/polycaprolactone scaffolds maintains long-term phenotypic stability.

The biliary tree is the target of damage in a number of important liver diseases. Although human biliary epithelial cells (hBECs) can be maintained in vitro for up to 8 weeks, using double-collagen gels, which offer a substantial improvement compared with conventional tissue culture plastic, such gels are unstable and, being only semisolid, they do not lend themselves readily to routine analysis. In this study we have investigated the behavior of primary hBECs on polyglycolic acid (PGA) fiber mesh scaffolds.