Designing Online Resources in Preparation for Authentic Laboratory Experiences.

Professional development for science teachers can be benefited through active learning in science laboratories. However, how online training materials can be used to complement traditional laboratory training is less understood. This paper explores the design of online training modules to teach molecular biology and user perception of those modules that were part of an intensive molecular biology "boot camp" targeting high school biology teachers in the State of Hawaii.

Correcting for the ewald sphere in high-resolution single-particle reconstructions.

To avoid the challenges of crystallization and the size limitations of NMR, it has long been hoped that single-particle cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) would eventually yield atomically interpretable reconstructions. For the most favorable class of specimens (large icosahedral viruses), one of the key obstacles is curvature of the Ewald sphere, which leads to a breakdown of the Projection Theorem used by conventional three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction programs. Here, we review the basic problem and our implementation of the "paraboloid" reconstruction method, which overcomes the limitation by averaging information from images recorded from different points of view.

Peach: a simple Perl-based system for distributed computation and its application to cryo-EM data processing.

A simple distributed processing system named "Peach" was developed to meet the rising computational demands of modern structural biology (and other) laboratories without additional expense by using existing hardware resources more efficiently. A central server distributes jobs to idle workstations in such a way that each computer is used maximally, but without disturbing intermittent interactive users. As compared to other distributed systems, Peach is simple, easy to install, easy to administer, easy to use, scalable, and robust.

Differential display RT-PCR analysis of enterovirus-71-infected rhabdomyosarcoma cells reveals mRNA expression responses of multiple human genes with known and novel functions.

In order to better understand cellular responses to viral infection at the transcriptional level, we employed differential display RT-PCR to analyze mRNAs from RD rhabdomyosarcoma cells following infection with a neurovirulent enterovirus 71 (EV71) strain, compared with mRNAs from uninfected cells. Of 250 expressed sequence tags (ESTs) isolated, sequenced, and identified, all were of cellular origin except 1 that was of viral origin. Of these, 156 were individual distinctive clones, comprising 45 mRNAs showing unaltered expression and 111 mRNAs exhibiting upregulation or downregulation.

Complete nucleotide sequence, genomic organization and phylogenetic analysis of a novel genital human papillomavirus type, HLT7474-S.

A novel human papillomavirus (HPV) type, HLT7474-S, was isolated from a cervical scraping of a female sex worker with a wart virus infection. The complete DNA sequence of 7812 bp was derived from four overlapping PCR products and authenticated by RFLP analysis. The L1 gene exhibited 78% identity to those of its most closely related known HPV types in group A7, comprising HPV types 18, 39, 45, 59, 68 and 70.