Aggregating sequences that occur in many proteins constitute weak spots of bacterial proteostasis

Aggregation is a sequence-specific process, nucleated by short aggregation-prone regions (APRs) that can be exploited to induce aggregation of proteins containing the same APR. Here, we find that most APRs are unique within a proteome, but that a small minority of APRs occur in many proteins. When aggregation is nucleated in bacteria by such frequently occurring APRs, it leads to massive and lethal inclusion body formation containing a large number of proteins. Buildup of bacterial resistance against these peptides is slow. In addition, the approach is effective against drug-resistant clinical isolates of Escherichiacoli and Acinetobacterbaumannii, reducing bacterial load in a murine bladder infection model. Our results indicate that redundant APRs are weak points of bacterial protein homeostasis and that targeting these may be an attractive antibacterial strategy

Radiographic assessment and clinical outcome after total hip arthroplasty with a Nanos® short stem prosthesis in 147 patients

Background. New generation short stem implants have some unquestionable advantages, which make them particularly attractive. However, in order to achieve good clinical results every implant must respect the normal joint anatomy and biomechanics. Objectives. To evaluate if these implants can fulfill the normal biomechanical parameters, such as femoral offset and leg length, and to assess the clinical outcome. Methods. The main radiographic parameters (horizontal and vertical rotation centre, femoral offset, leg length) have been evaluated in 147 patients who had a short stem implanted between July 2010 and July 2012 at the Private Hospital The Avenue in Melbourne, Australia. Patients have been clinically assessed with the Harris Hip Score and the WOMAC score preoperatively and at 3 months and at 1 year follow-up. Results. Restoration of the four main radiographic parameters was achieved within 5 mm of the contralateral side in most of our patients. Clinical results are excellent, as with the standard stems. Conclusions. With the Nanos® stem we can expect only minor and probably meaningless differences concerning the biomechanical parameters and the leg length; clinical results are comparable to the standard stems. Therefore, we believe the Nanos® stem to be a very useful implant for the total hip arthroplasty

Scalable, Low-Noise Architecture for Integrated Terahertz Imagers

We propose a scalable, low-noise imager architecture for terahertz recordings that helps to build large-scale integrated arrays from any field-effect transistor (FET)- or HEMT-based terahertz detector. It enhances the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) by inherently enabling complex sampling schemes. The distinguishing feature of the architecture is the serially connected detectors with electronically controllable photoresponse. We show that this architecture facilitate room temperature imaging by decreasing the low-noise amplifier (LNA) noise to one-sixteenth of a non-serial sensor while also reducing the number of multiplexed signals in the same proportion. The serially coupled architecture can be combined with the existing read-out circuit organizations to create high-resolution, coarse-grain sensor arrays. Besides, it adds the capability to suppress overall noise with increasing array size. The theoretical considerations are proven on a 4 by 4 detector array manufactured on 180 nm feature sized standard CMOS technology. The detector array is integrated with a low-noise AC-coupled amplifier of 40 dB gain and has a resonant peak at 460 GHz with 200 kV/W overall sensitivity