Team Up. Pressure Down.

IMPACT. 1: Educated 122 new patient and 5 recurring patients -- 2. Provided 72 BP monitors and 18 large sized cuffs -- 3. Collaborated with 13 different OSU PharmaD students.COMMUNITY PARTNERS: Helping Hands Health & Wellness Center (HH)PRIMARY CONTACT: Kriss PetrovskisTeam Up, Pressure Down (TUPD) is a pharmacist‐driven HTN education program, developed by the CDC, to improve cardiovascular health and reduce heart attacks and strokes

Effects of electron acceptors and donors on transformation of tetrachloromethane by Shewanella putrefaciens MR-1

Transformation of chlorinated aliphatic compounds was examined in Shewanella putrefaciens strain MR-1, an obligately respiring facultative anaerobe. Under anaerobic conditions, MR-1 has been shown to transform tetrachloromethane to trichloromethane (24%), CO 2 (7%), cell-bound material (50%) and unidentified nonvolatile products (4%). The highest rate and extent of transformation were observed with MR-1 cells grown under iron(III)-respiring conditions. Lactate, formate and hydrogen were the most effective electron donors. Tetrachloromethane was not degraded in the presence of oxygen. Transformation of other chlorinated methanes and ethenes was not observed.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/73742/1/j.1574-6968.1994.tb07126.x.pd

Fibronectin-binding nanoparticles for intracellular targeting addressed by B. burgdorferi BBK32 protein fragments

Virus-like particles (VLPs) are created by the self-assembly of multiple copies of envelope and/or capsid proteins from many viruses, mimicking the conformation of a native virus. Such noninfectious nanostructures are mainly used as antigen-presenting platforms, especially in vaccine research; however, some of them recently were used as scaffolds in biotechnology to produce targeted nanoparticles for intracellular delivery. This study demonstrates the creation of fusion VLPs using hepatitis B core protein-based system maintaining a fibronectin-binding property from B. burgdorferi BBK32 protein, including the evidence of particles’ transmission to BHK-21 target cells via caveolae/rafts endocythosis. These results make this construct to be an attractive model in development of HBc-based nanoparticles for cellular targeting applications and highlights the fragment of B. burgdorferi BBK32 as a novel cellular uptake-promoting peptide.This work was supported by grant of Latvian Council of Science, Nr. 10.0029.3 and by ESF Projec

Shewanella irciniae sp nov., a novel member of the family Shewanellaceae, isolated from the marine sponge Ircinia dendroides in the Bay of Villefranche, Mediterranean Sea

Strain UST040317-058(T), comprising non-pigmented, rod-shaped, facultatively anaerobic, Gram-negative cells that are motile by means of single polar flagella, was isolated from the surface of a marine sponge (Ircinia dendroides) collected from the Mediterranean Sea. Comparative 16S rRNA gene sequence-based phylogenetic analysis placed the strain in a separate cluster with the recognized bacterium Shewanella algae IAM 14159(T), with which it showed a sequence similarity of 95.0 %. The sequence similarity between strain UST040317-058(T) and its other (six) closest relatives ranged from 91.6 to 93.8 %. Strain UST040317-058(T) showed oxidase, catalase and gelatinase activities. The typical respiratory quinones for shewanellas, menaquinone MK-7 and ubiquinones Q-7 and Q-8, were also detected. The predominant fatty acids in strain UST040317-058(T) were i15 : 0, 16 : 0, 17 : 1omega8c and summed feature 3 (comprising i15 : 0 2-OH and/or 16 : 1omega7c), altogether representing 56.9 % of the total. The DNA G+C content was 39.9 mol%. The strain could be differentiated from other Shewanella species by its inability to reduce nitrate or produce H(2)S and by 10-22 additional phenotypic characteristics. On the basis of the phylogenetic and phenotypic data presented in this study, strain UST040317-058(T) represents a novel species in the genus Shewanella, for which the name Shewanella irciniae sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is UST040317-058(T) (=JCM 13528(T)=NRRL B-41466(T))

A Wide Extent of Inter-Strain Diversity in Virulent and Vaccine Strains of Alphaherpesviruses

Alphaherpesviruses are widespread in the human population, and include herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) and 2, and varicella zoster virus (VZV). These viral pathogens cause epithelial lesions, and then infect the nervous system to cause lifelong latency, reactivation, and spread. A related veterinary herpesvirus, pseudorabies (PRV), causes similar disease in livestock that result in significant economic losses. Vaccines developed for VZV and PRV serve as useful models for the development of an HSV-1 vaccine. We present full genome sequence comparisons of the PRV vaccine strain Bartha, and two virulent PRV isolates, Kaplan and Becker. These genome sequences were determined by high-throughput sequencing and assembly, and present new insights into the attenuation of a mammalian alphaherpesvirus vaccine strain. We find many previously unknown coding differences between PRV Bartha and the virulent strains, including changes to the fusion proteins gH and gB, and over forty other viral proteins. Inter-strain variation in PRV protein sequences is much closer to levels previously observed for HSV-1 than for the highly stable VZV proteome. Almost 20% of the PRV genome contains tandem short sequence repeats (SSRs), a class of nucleic acids motifs whose length-variation has been associated with changes in DNA binding site efficiency, transcriptional regulation, and protein interactions. We find SSRs throughout the herpesvirus family, and provide the first global characterization of SSRs in viruses, both within and between strains. We find SSR length variation between different isolates of PRV and HSV-1, which may provide a new mechanism for phenotypic variation between strains. Finally, we detected a small number of polymorphic bases within each plaque-purified PRV strain, and we characterize the effect of passage and plaque-purification on these polymorphisms. These data add to growing evidence that even plaque-purified stocks of stable DNA viruses exhibit limited sequence heterogeneity, which likely seeds future strain evolution