Kinetics of surfactant in respiratory diseases of the newborn infant.

Deficiency or dysfunction of pulmonary surfactant plays a critical role in the pathogenesis of respiratory diseases in the newborn. We describe the studies made by applying two recently developed methods to measure surfactant kinetics. The first allows the measurement of endogenous surfactant phosphatidylcholine (PC) synthesis and kinetics by a constant intravenous infusion of glucose or fatty acids labeled with stable isotope 13C. The second method consists of endotracheal administration of a tracer dose of 13C-labeled dipalmitoyl-phosphatidylcholine (DPPC) to measure disaturated-phosphatidylcholine (DSPC) half-life and apparent pool size. We present the results of surfactant kinetics in some of the respiratory diseases of the newborn infant.

Semi-multiplex PCR technique for screening of abundant transcripts during systematic sequencing of cDNA libraries.

The systematic sequencing of cDNA libraries is an efficient approach for the identification of new genes, but the presence of abundant mRNAs is often a major problem. This paper describes a very simple method of "semi-multiplex PCR" that allows specific identification of such abundant transcripts before DNA sequencing without using nonrepresentative subtracted libraries. The PCR utilizes a series of forward primers specific for abundant transcripts with a pair of universal primers used for template generation. cDNA clones corresponding to abundant mRNAs are then revealed by double bands in agarose gel.