Expert opinions of strategies for milk fever control.

Dairy cows have several risk factors for milk fever. The most-suitable strategy to control milk fever in a specific herd will depend on herd-specific circumstances such as the attitude and skills of the farmer, the opportunities available in the production system and the economic consequences of a certain strategy. To develop feasible strategies in a modern loose-housing dairy herd, we carried out an expert opinion study.

Peptides identify the critical hotspots involved in the biological activation of the insulin receptor.

We used phage display to generate surrogate peptides that define the hotspots involved in protein-protein interaction between insulin and the insulin receptor. All of the peptides competed for insulin binding and had affinity constants in the high nanomolar to low micromolar range. Based on competition studies, peptides were grouped into non-overlapping Sites 1, 2, or 3.

Functional reconstitution of insulin receptor binding site from non-binding receptor fragments.

We have previously shown that a minimized insulin receptor (IR) consisting of the first 468 amino acids of the insulin receptor fused to 16 amino acids from the C terminus of the alpha-subunit (CT domain) bound insulin with nanomolar affinity (Kristensen, C., Wiberg, F. C.