Fire safety essentials.

Fire prevention and protection are not complex. The basic principles for avoiding fires are well known and relatively simple to implement. Handling fire issues effectively is not always easy, though. It requires careful consideration about the hazards of our operations, the development of effective strategies for handling these hazards, and constant vigilance to ensure these methods are implemented effectively every day.

Herpes simplex virus-mediated human hypoxanthine-guanine phosphoribosyltransferase gene transfer into neuronal cells.

The virtually complete deficiency of the purine salvage enzyme hypoxanthine-guanine phosphoribosyltransferase (HPRT) results in a devastating neurological disease, Lesch-Nyhan syndrome. Transfer of the HPRT gene into fibroblasts and lymphoblasts in vitro and into hematopoietic cells in vivo has been accomplished by other groups with retroviral-derived vectors. It appears to be necessary, however, to transfer the HPRT gene into neuronal cells to correct the neurological dysfunction of this disorder. The neurotropic virus herpes simplex virus type 1 has features that make it suitable for use as a vector to transfer the HPRT gene into neuronal tissue. This report describes the isolation of an HPRT-deficient rat neuroma cell line, designated B103-4C, and the construction of a recombinant herpes simplex virus type 1 that contained human HPRT cDNA. These recombinant viruses were used to infect B103-4C cells. Infected cells expressed HPRT activity which was human in origin.

Activation of gene expression is adversely affected at high multiplicities of linked simian virus 40 enhancer.

We have cloned multiple copies of 72-base-pair (bp) repeat transcriptional enhancer element from simian virus 40 in plasmid vectors upstream from the bacterial chloramphenicol acetyltransferase gene under the control of the simian virus 40 early promoter. Two copies of the 72-bp repeat provided efficient activation of gene expression. Increasing the number of linked 72-bp units to four substantially improved the activation of gene expression, but further addition of enhancers diminished the activation of gene expression proportionally to the number of enhancers added. Enhancer regions containing 10 or more copies of the 72-bp sequence were very inefficient in gene activation. Plasmids containing such expanded enhancer regions also competed less efficiently in vivo for trans-acting enhancer-binding factors. These effects are specific for the enhancer element and are not produced by reiterations of the 21-bp promoter element. Multiple enhancer units placed upstream do not interfere with the accuracy of mRNA initiation directed by the simian virus 40 early promoter in these plasmid constructs but do severely inhibit the initiation of replication at the neighboring simian virus 40 origin of replication that overlaps the early promoter region. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that the structural alterations induced in the DNA by a large number of copies of the enhancer are not favorable for the activation of a linked gene or for the binding of factors believed to mediate the enhancement effect.