Determination of serum zinc levels in normal Maltese adults by atomic absorption spectrophotometry

The importance of zinc as one of the essential trace elements in the living organisms is becoming increasingly recognised. In the process of carrying out measurements to establish normal reference values for our laboratory, it was noticed that the values being obtained, generally appeared to be higher than those published in the literature where similar techniques had been employed. It is important to gain further understanding of this metal in both health and disease as it appears that zinc is essential to an important variety of metabolic processes in man. We are unable to offer a satisfactory explanation for the difference in serum zinc levels in the two groups reported in this paper. Local water does not appear to have high zinc content and Maltese soil is known to be zinc deficient. It is known however that local farmers use a zinc containing fungicide (Zineb) on a large scale.peer-reviewe

Application of Divide and Conquer Extended Genetic Algorithm to Tertiary Protein Structure of Chymotrypsin Inhibitor-2

Determining the method by which a protein thermodynamically folds and unfolds in three-dimension is one of the most complex and least understood problems in modern biochemistry. Misfolded proteins have been recently linked to diseases including Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Alzheimer's disease. Because of the large number of parameters involved in defining the tertiary structure of proteins, based on free energy global minimisation, we have developed a new Divide and Conquer (DAC) Extended Genetic Algorithm. The approach was applied to explore and verify the energy landscape of protein chymotrypsin inhibitor-2

Application of Divide and Conquer Extended Genetic Algorithm to Tertiary Protein Structure of Chymotrypsin Inhibitor-2

Determining the method by which a protein thermodynamically folds and unfolds in three-dimension is one of the most complex and least understood problems in modern biochemistry. Misfolded proteins have been recently linked to diseases including Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Alzheimer\u27s disease. Because of the large number of parameters involved in defining the tertiary structure of proteins, based on free energy global minimisation, we have developed a new Divide and Conquer (DAC) Extended Genetic Algorithm. The approach was applied to explore and verify the energy landscape of protein chymotrypsin inhibitor-2