Sutherlandkehoe5585

Sepiwhite is a novel anti-pigmenting agent that is derived from fatty acid and phenylalanine and used for hyperpigmentation induced by light exposure or inflammation. In this study, a simple and validated high-performance liquid chromatography method for the quantitation of sepiwhite was developed. Optimized forced degradation of sepiwhite at thermal, acid/base, photolysis, oxidative, and heavy metal ions conditions were evaluated and the effect of each of them on production of specific 10%-30% degradants was studied by the approach of design of experiments. Sepiwhite accelerated study was conducted and toxicity of sepiwhite at each condition was tested. An optimized high-performance liquid chromatography method was validated by a face-centered central composition design. Ten different degradants were identified from sepiwhite and degradation behavior under different conditions was studied. Sepiwhite and its degradant products show no cytotoxicity. This optimized high-performance liquid chromatography method can be applied for quality control assay and sepiwhite degradation behavior may be considered in the manufacturing of sepiwhite products.Studies on the tissue distribution of the new synthetic opioid U-47700 and its main metabolite N-desmethyl-U-47700 revealed about sixfold higher metabolite concentrations in pig brain as compared with the parent compound. To better assess the toxic potential of this drug, the aim of this study was to assess the in vitro μ-opioid receptor (MOR) activation potential of the main metabolites of U-47700, N-desmethyl-U-47700, and N,N-bisdesmethyl-U-47700, using a live cell-based reporter assay based on NanoLuc Binary Technology®. Cells stably expressing human MOR and β-arrestin 2 (βarr2), each fused via a flexible linker to two complementary inactive subunits of the nanoluciferase, were seeded on poly-d-lysine-coated 96-well plates and treated with N-desmethyl-U-47700, N,N-bisdesmethyl-U-47700, U-47700, or hydromorphone as reference standard. MOR activation results in functional complementation of the nanoluciferase, which can be assessed via luminescence monitoring. The potency of the metabolites is lower than that of U-47700 (EC50 of 186 nM for U-47700, 3770 nM for N-desmethyl-U-47700, and >5 μM for N,N-bisdesmethyl-U-47700). The maximal efficacy (Emax ) observed (relative to hydromorphone, set arbitrarily at 100%) decreased from 183% to 127% and 39.2% for U-47700, N-desmethyl-U-47700, and N,N-bisdesmethyl-U-47700, respectively. Thus, the loss of one or two methyl groups reduced the MOR activation potential, which was more pronounced if both methyl groups were removed. It is thus anticipated that the impact on MOR exerted by the higher metabolite concentration in brain has only little-if any relevance for the strong toxic effects of U-47700.Inpatient ward placements are rich with practical learning opportunities for medical students; however, many such opportunities go overlooked and underused. Newly qualified doctors often feel underprepared for work on wards; improving student experience on ward placements can address this. Although this requires an active effort from both students and clinical educators, it is not arduous and has mutual benefit improving medical education while simultaneously reducing staff workload. Here, we present a guide for both teachers and students highlighting three key areas of ward learning that may be improved strategies to drive active learning, integration of students into the ward team and underutilised resources to develop a patient-centred approach.

Safe medication management requires collaboration between health professionals.

A mixed academic and clinician team co-designed and co-facilitated a 2-h interprofessional medication safety workshop, covering medication history taking, perioperative medication management, discharge planning, incident review and dosing and administration calculations. Three workshop sessions were delivered across three sites during September 2019 at a large metropolitan healthcare network. Senior nursing, medical and pharmacy students were invited to participate in the workshops and evaluation.

We evaluated satisfaction, learning experience and perceived clinical application for medical, pharmacy and nursing students. Surveys were conducted immediately after each workshop and at 4 weeks. Quantitative data was analysed descriptively and qualitative data analysed using thematic analysis. Forty-five students participated in the evaluative component of the workshops. Mean student response scores demonstrated a high level of satisfaction with the workshop's relevance and utility to their learning. Students expressed strong agreement that the workshop promoted communication across professions for medication safety. Analysis of the qualitative data identified seven key themes, with consistently positive responses provided in each interactions within the interprofessional team; recognising the importance of teams; learning the process of medication use; acknowledging and working with difference; role playing; thinking patient safety; and authenticity.

A 2-h interprofessional workshop about medication safety provided positive learning experiences with high satisfaction to medical, nursing and pharmacy students, and had strong perceived applicability to their future clinical practice.

A 2-h interprofessional workshop about medication safety provided positive learning experiences with high satisfaction to medical, nursing and pharmacy students, and had strong perceived applicability to their future clinical practice.Fructophilic behavior in microalgae is a rare trait that could benefit biorefineries by enabling substitution of carbon source with fructose, and our previous study identified that Ettlia sp. prefers fructose relative to glucose. In this study, by analyzing the transcription levels of genes related to sugar transport and the glycolysis pathway, the fructose utilization of Ettlia sp. was investigated. In a fructose-containing medium, the expression levels of fructokinase (EttFRK3) and glucokinase (EttGCK1 and EttGCK2) genes were significantly upregulated in heterotrophic cultivation of Ettlia sp. under fructose supplementation conditions. Further, a sugar transporter (EttSTF11) was significantly upregulated by 3.2-fold in one day, and this increase was analogous to the specific growth rate exhibited by the species. Subsequent cultivation tests with multi-sugar sources also showed a significant upregulation of EttSTF11 relative to other treatments without fructose. A phylogenetic tree derived from the analysis of different transporters of interest identified that EttSTF11 was adjacent to reference fructose transporters with a high bootstrap value of 71. Given that the transmembrane domains of EttSTF11 were analogous to those of reference fructose transporter genes, EttSTF11 appeared to play a critical role in fructose consumption and metabolism in Ettlia sp. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.Microbes interact in natural communities in a spatially structured manner, particularly in biofilms and polymicrobial infections. While next generation sequencing approaches provide powerful insights into diversity, metabolic capacity, and mutational profiles of these communities, they generally fail to recover in situ spatial proximity between distinct genotypes in the interactome. Hi-C is a promising method that has assisted in analysing complex microbiomes, by creating chromatin cross-links in cells, that aid in identifying adjacent DNA, to improve de novo assembly. This study explored a modified Hi-C approach involving an initial lysis phase prior to DNA cross-linking, to test whether adjacent cell chromatin can be cross-linked, anticipating that this could provide a new avenue for study of spatial-mutational dynamics in structured microbial communities. An artificial polymicrobial mixture of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, and Escherichia coli was lysed for 1-18 h, then prepared for Hi-C. A murine biofilm infection model was treated with sonication, mechanical lysis, or chemical lysis before Hi-C. Bioinformatic analyses of resulting Hi-C interspecies chromatin links showed that while microbial species differed from one another, generally lysis significantly increased links between species and increased the distance of Hi-C links within species, while also increasing novel plasmid-chromosome links. The success of this modified lysis-Hi-C protocol in creating extracellular DNA links is a promising first step toward a new lysis-Hi-C based method to recover genotypic microgeography in polymicrobial communities, with potential future applications in diseases with localized resistance, such as cystic fibrosis lung infections and chronic diabetic ulcers.Delimiting species boundaries is a major goal in evolutionary biology. An increasing volume of literature has focused on the challenges of investigating cryptic diversity within complex evolutionary scenarios of speciation, including gene flow and demographic fluctuations. New methods based on model selection, such as approximate Bayesian computation, approximate likelihoods, and machine learning are promising tools arising in this field. Here, we introduce a framework for species delimitation using the multispecies coalescent model coupled with a deep learning algorithm based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs). We compared this strategy with a similar ABC approach. We applied both methods to test species boundary hypotheses based on current and previous taxonomic delimitations as well as genetic data (sequences from 41 loci) in Pilosocereus aurisetus, a cactus species complex with a sky-island distribution and taxonomic uncertainty. To validate our method, we also applied the same strategy on data from widely accepted species from the genus Drosophila. The results show that our CNN approach has a high capacity to distinguish among the simulated species delimitation scenarios, with higher accuracy than ABC. For the cactus data set, a splitter hypothesis without gene flow showed the highest probability in both CNN and ABC approaches, a result agreeing with previous taxonomic classifications and in line with the sky-island distribution and low dispersal of P. aurisetus. Our results highlight the cryptic diversity within the P. aurisetus complex and show that CNNs are a promising approach for distinguishing complex evolutionary histories, even outperforming the accuracy of other model-based approaches such as ABC.Artemisia pallens Wall. ex DC., popularly known as davana, has gained considerable attention because of its unique fragrance, high economic value, and pharmacological properties. The compositional complexity of davana essential oil (DO) has been a challenge for quality control. In this study, the chemical profile of DO was developed using polarity-based fractionation and a combination of gas chromatographic (GC-FID), hyphenated chromatographic (GC/MS), and spectroscopic (Fourier-Transform Infra-Red, 1D, 2D-Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) techniques. The analysis led to the identification of ninety-nine compounds. Major components of the DO were cis-davanone (D3, 53.0 %), bicyclogermacrene (6.9 %), trans-ethyl cinnamate (4.9 %), davana ether isomer (3.4 %), spathulenol (2.8 %), cis-hydroxy davanone (2.4 %), and trans-davanone (2.1 %). The study led to identifying several co-eluting novel minor components, which could help determine the authenticity of DO. The rigorous column-chromatography led to the isolation of five compounds.