A prospective, multicenter, clinical study of duodenoscope contamination after reprocessing.

Objective: Several clinical procedures utilize duodenoscopes, which are processed for reuse after the procedures are completed. However, infection outbreaks due to improper duodenoscope processing occur frequently. To address this, we aimed to assess the contamination rates of duodenoscopes after reprocessing in nonoutbreak settings.

Structural basis of the 3'-end recognition of a leading strand in stalled replication forks by PriA.

In eubacteria, PriA helicase detects the stalled DNA replication forks. This critical role of PriA is ascribed to its ability to bind to the 3' end of a nascent leading DNA strand in the stalled replication forks. The crystal structures in complexes with oligonucleotides and the combination of fluorescence correlation spectroscopy and mutagenesis reveal that the N-terminal domain of PriA possesses a binding pocket for the 3'-terminal nucleotide residue of DNA.

Detection of weak ligand interactions of leukocyte Ig-like receptor B1 by fluorescence correlation spectroscopy.

Fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) can directly and quickly detect the translational diffusion of individual fluorescence-labeled molecules in solutions. Although FCS analyses for protein-protein interactions have been performed, the very weak interactions generally observed in cell-cell recognition of the immune system have not been examined in detail. Here, we report the FCS analysis for low-affinity and fast-kinetic binding (K(d) greater than muM range) of the human inhibitory immune cell surface receptor, leukocyte immunoglobulin-like receptor B1 (LILRB1), to its ligands, MHC (major histocompatibility complex) class I molecules (MHCIs) by using the single-molecule FCS detection system which requires only a small amount of sample.

Detection of protein-DNA interactions in crude cellular extracts by fluorescence correlation spectroscopy.

Fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) is a methodology to examine directly the translational diffusion of individual fluorescence-labeled molecules in solutions. Recent studies using FCS have quantified various bimolecular reactions without any need for amplification. To evaluate further the applicability of FCS, we studied the specific binding between proteins and DNA in crude biological samples.