The drivers of supply and demand in Australia's rural and regional centres

This Paper has reviewed both the literature on regional housing markets and the current and emerging policy environment. It has shown that there have been significant developments in housing policy over the previous two years, with a number of major policy initiatives and substantial public sector investment in housing. The Positioning Paper has suggested that not all new programs and policies are equally accessible to metropolitan and non-metropolitan Australia alike.Andrew Beer, Selina Tually, Steven Rowley, Fiona Haslam McKenzie, Julia Schlapp, Christina Birdsall Jones and Vanessa Corunn

Antimicrobial functionalized genetically engineered spider silk

Genetically engineered fusion proteins offer potential as multifunctional biomaterials for medical use. Fusion or chimeric proteins can be formed using recombinant DNA technology by combining nucleotide sequences encoding different peptides or proteins that are otherwise not found together in nature. In the present study, three new fusion proteins were designed, cloned and expressed and assessed for function, by combining the consensus sequence of dragline spider silk with three different antimicrobial peptides. The human antimicrobial peptides human neutrophil defensin 2 (HNP-2), human neutrophil defensins 4 (HNP-4) and hepcidin were fused to spider silk through bioengineering. The spider silk domain maintained its self-assembly features, a key aspect of these new polymeric protein biomaterials, allowing the formation of b-sheets to lock in structures via physical interactions without the need for chemical crosslinking. These new functional silk proteins were assessed for antimicrobial activity against Gram e Escherichia coli and Gram þ Staphylococcus aureus and microbicidal activity was demonstrated. Dynamic light scattering was used to assess protein aggregation to clarify the antimicrobial patterns observed. Attenuated-total reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) and circular dichroism (CD) were used to assess the secondary structure of the new recombinant proteins. In vitro cell studies with a human osteosarcoma cell line (SaOs-2) demonstrated the compatibility of these new proteins with mammalian cells.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - Bolsa de doutoramento (SFRH/BD/28603/2006); Chimera project (PTDC/EBB-EBI/109093/2008); NIH and Tissue Engineering Resource Center EB003210, P41 EB002520, DE017207

BVDV virus-like particles

The present invention relates to bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) virus-like particles, a polycistronic RNA and DNA corresponding thereto encoding a polyprotein of BVDV structural proteins that are sufficient to form BVDV virus-like particles, a viral vector encoding factors and structural proteins for the assembly of BVDV virus-like particles, a vaccine comprising BVDV virus-like particles, a diagnostic kit and methods for preparing BVDV virus-like particles

Plasmonic nanosensors for the label-free imaging of dynamic protein patterns

We introduce a new approach to monitor the dynamics and spatial patterns of biological molecular assemblies. Our molecular imaging method relies on plasmonic gold nanoparticles as point-like detectors and requires no labeling of the molecules. We show spatial resolution of up to 5 μm and 30 ms temporal resolution, which is comparable to wide-field fluorescence microscopy, while requiring only readily available gold nanoparticles and a dark-field optical microscope. We demonstrate the method on MinDE proteins attaching to and detaching from lipid membranes of different composition for 24 h. We foresee our new imaging method as an indispensable tool in advanced molecular biology and biophysics laboratories around the world.Depto. de Química FísicaFac. de Ciencias QuímicasTRUEpu

Metallo‐Scorpionates : First Generation of Trimetallic, Homoleptic [Ru]–M–[Ru] Complexes (M = Fe, Co, Ni, Cu)

The first metallo‐scorpionate ligands, closely related to Trofimenko's scorpionates, are obtained by formal replacement of the hydrido‐boron moiety of hydrido‐tris(pyrazolyl)borate by an (arene)RuII fragment. Coordination to divalent and trivalent 3d‐transition metals (Fe, Co, Ni, Cu) gives access to a series of homoleptic, heterotrimetallic complexes containing linear metal chains bridged by pyrazole ligands. Synthetic aspects, spectroscopic, structural and electrochemical properties are reported and compared to those of standard scorpionate complexes.publishe