Recommended biocontainment features for research and diagnostic facilities where animal pathogens are used. First International Veterinary Biosafety Workshop.

Recommendations are presented for the minimum structural components, special utilities, installations, and other design and operational features which define a microbiologically-secure animal containment facility. These biocontainment parameters are expected to enable the safe housing and handling of livestock and poultry infected with pathogenic agents. Physical testing and certification requirements for commissioning such facilities are described. Such a facility will minimise personnel exposure to infectious agents, limit cross-contamination between experiments, minimise horizontal transmission between research animals, and reduce the likelihood of pathogenic agents being released to the outside environment.

Biosynthesis of MSH and related peptides in the pars intermedia of the mouse: a pulse-chase analysis.

Protein biosynthesis in neurointermediate lobes of mouse pituitaries was investigated using pulse and pulse-chase techniques with [3H]lysine. Electrophoretic analysis of lobe homogenates on acid-urea gels resolved 11 labeled products. One was a large protein which was rapidly synthesized during pulse-incubations and disappeared during chase incubations. Three of the products increased during chase incubations, suggesting a precursor-product mode of biosynthesis for these chasde peptides. One of these three products co-migrated with synthetic alpha-MSH and also corresponds to the major peak of mouse neurointermediate lobe MSH bioactivity and immunoactivity on electrophoretograms. Another case of these peptides has electrophoretic properties similar to those of ACTH.