Risk of MRSA Infection in Patients with Intermittent versus Persistent MRSA Nares Colonization.

Objective: To determine the relative risk of invasive methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection among non-colonized (NC) patients, intermittently colonized (IC) patients, and persistently colonized (PC) patients.

Design: Observational cohort study of patient data collected longitudinally over a 41-month period.

Setting: Department of Veterans Affairs Eastern Colorado Healthcare System, a tertiary care medical center.

High-throughput fluorescence spectroscopic analysis of affinity of peptides displayed on bacteriophage.

Fluorescence spectroscopy titrations, although widely used to analyze binding affinity, are not an efficient screening method for detecting high-affinity binding among a large number of available ligands, such as during bacteriophage display selections. We hypothesize that a miniaturized, high-throughput fluorescence spectroscopy assay can be used to efficiently analyze selection results by applying the Langmuir equation to the binding data to estimate affinity constants for a large number of ligands, either as synthesized molecules or as displayed on bacteriophage. Here, bacteriophage-display-derived peptides specific for the Thomsen-Friedenreich disaccharide are used to develop a high-throughput fluorescence spectroscopy screening method, which uses one binding partner labeled with a fluorescent dye and different concentrations of a second partner to analyze binding affinity in bacteriophage display selections.