CHOIS: enabling grid technologies for obesity surveillance and control.

CHOIS, the Child Health and Obesity Informatics System, is developed using open source portal technology with three-tiered Open Grid Services Architecture, an accepted standard for accessing Grid Computing and other services under Open Grid Collaborating Environments (OGCE). Its web application provides web based forms with 112 different fields to enter data ranging from demographic, height & weight for BMI, to genomic information. Automatic computation of BMI, BMI percentile and the risk of obesity alert are embedded into this system. After successful testing of the prototype, CHOIS is now ready to be used by the Illinois Department of Human Services (DHS) for obesity surveillance. This HIPAA & FERPA compliant secure system, integrating large databases in a high performance grid computing environment, enables school-nurse to collect data on school children and report statistical and surveillance information on BMI to identify those at-risk and obese for obesity prevention and intervention programs.

Comparative sequence analysis in the sialyltransferase protein family: analysis of motifs.

The sialyltransferase family represents a group of enzymes that transfers sialic acid from its common nucleotide sugar donor, CMP-NeuAc, to the terminal carbohydrates group of various glycoproteins and glycolipids. Cloning of these enzymes from mammalian sources indicated these are all type II membrane proteins with topological features common to other glycosyltransferases. To date, 20 cloned enzymes with distinct substrate specificity have been obtained for mammalian sialyltransferases. These account for four subfamilies according to the carbohydrate linkages synthesized, namely, ST3Gal, ST6Gal, ST6GalNAc, and ST8Sia. Comparative peptide sequence analysis of these cloned enzymes showed the presence of four conserve sialylmotifs, namely 'L'- (for long), 'S'- (for short), -'III' (for being third position in sequence) and '-VS' (for very small), common to all of this protein family. Experiments by site-directed mutagenesis showed evidence that these motifs contribute to the binding of either donor or the acceptor or both. While the L-sialylmotif contributes to the binding of the donor substrate, the motifs -III and -VS contribute to the binding of the acceptor substrate. S-sialymotif, on the other hand, contributes to the binding of both the donor and acceptor substrates. Apparently, a disulfide linkage between the L-sialylmotif and the S-sialylmotif bringing all of these motifs closer together facilitates such interaction with the substrates. In addition, although with no experimental evidence, comparative sequence analysis also suggests a strong correlation of linkage specificity of these enzymes with the peptide sequence closer to these sialylmotifs.

Effect of chemotherapy on viability of Mycobacterium leprae as determined by ATP Content, morphological index and FDA-EB fluorescent staining

Viable bacterial populations were estimated in bacilli purified from 105 biopsies from 40 untreated and 65 multibacillary leprosy patients treated with multidrug therapy (MDT) for varying periods. The bacilli were purified and viability was determined by ATP content, morphological index (MI), and fluorescein diacetate-ethidium bromide (FDA-EB) staining. Viable populations were calculated, taking 3.58 x 10(-15) g/solid bacillus as the mean ATP content of a viable unit of Mycobacterium leprae. The proportion of viable bacilli was also estimated in the same specimens using solid-staining (MI) and green-staining bacilli by the FDA-EB method. In the untreated cases, the positive viability by ATP assay was 100%, 92% by MI, and 100% by FDA-EB. ATP content per solid bacillus was relatively constant, which was not the case with ATP content per green-staining bacillus. While the MI was zero in all cases, viable bacilli could still be detected by ATP estimations in 5 of the 32 (16%) patients after 2 years of MDT and in 1 of the 20 (5%) patients after 3 years of MDT. No viable bacilli could be detected even by this method beyond 3 years of MDT. On the other hand, green-staining bacilli were demonstrable in 7/32 (22%) of cases after 2 years of MDT, 2/20 (10%) after 3 years of MDT, and 1/13 (8%) after more than 3 years of treatment, indicating that the FDA-EB staining and ATP assay did not detect the same populations. A determination of the ATP content of M. leprae could be used as a reliable and sensitive tool for determining viability of the bacilli