Sustainable general practice.

BACKGROUND: Climate change is a health emergency, and general practitioners have an important role in both mitigation and adaptation to the effects of climate change. Climate change is already impacting health in a myriad of ways, including death and illness from increasingly frequent extreme weather events, disruptions to food systems and changes in vector-borne diseases. General practice can demonstrate leadership by embracing sustainability as part of a primary care ethos aligning it with quality care. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this article is to outline the steps required to achieve and promote sustainability from practice operations through to clinical care and advocacy. DISCUSSION: Achieving sustainability requires not just a consideration of energy use or waste, but also a fundamental re-evaluation of the purpose and practice of medicine. A planetary health perspective requires us to recognise our connectedness to and dependence on the health of nature. It demands a change to models of healthcare that are sustainable, prioritise prevention and are inclusive of the social and environmental dimensions to health.

The Brain Protein Atlas: A conglomerate of proteomics datasets of human neural tissue.

The human brain represents one of the most complex biological structures with significant spatiotemporal molecular plasticity occurring through early development, learning, aging, and disease. While much progress has been made in mapping its transcriptional architecture, more downstream phenotypic readouts are relatively scarce due to limitations with tissue heterogeneity and accessibility, as well as an inability to amplify protein species prior to global -OMICS analysis. To address some of these barriers, our group has recently focused on using mass-spectrometry workflows compatible with small amounts of formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue samples. This has enabled exploration into spatiotemporal proteomic signatures of the brain and disease across otherwise inaccessible neurodevelopmental timepoints and anatomical niches. Given the similar theme and approaches, we introduce an integrated online portal, "The Brain Protein Atlas (BPA)" (www.brainproteinatlas.org), representing a public resource that allows users to access and explore these amalgamated datasets. Specifically, this portal contains a growing set of peer-reviewed mass-spectrometry-based proteomic datasets, including spatiotemporal profiles of human cerebral development, diffuse gliomas, clinically aggressive meningiomas, and a detailed anatomic atlas of glioblastoma. One barrier to entry in mass spectrometry-based proteomics data analysis is the steep learning curve required to extract biologically relevant data. BPA, therefore, includes several built-in analytical tools to generate relevant plots (e.g., volcano plots, heatmaps, boxplots, and scatter plots) and evaluate the spatiotemporal patterns of proteins of interest. Future iterations aim to expand available datasets, including those generated by the community at large, and analytical tools for exploration. Ultimately, BPA aims to improve knowledge dissemination of proteomic information across the neuroscience community in hopes of accelerating the biological understanding of the brain and various maladies.

Species-specific identification of ruminant components contaminating industrial crude porcine heparin using real-time fluorescent qualitative and quantitative PCR.

Ever since the emergence of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, the source of pharmaceutical heparin has been restricted to porcine intestinal mucosa. In this project, two real-time fluorescent PCR methods were developed to assist with quality control analysis. The first is a qualitative method which relies on SYBR Green I chemistry to confirm the porcine origin of industrial crude porcine heparin (ICPH), identify any ruminant contaminants, and generally control purity. The second is based on TaqMan chemistry and is able to quantitatively identify porcine, bovine, caprine, and ovine components and contaminants in ICPH. By targeting mitochondrial DNA, both PCR systems showed a detection limit of 1 pg DNA and amplification efficiencies ranging between 96% and 102%. Moreover, quantitative PCR showed a detection limit of 0.02 ppm in samples comprising porcine, bovine, caprine, and ovine DNA. The results of qualitative PCR over 27 ICPH samples showed that all samples were porcine in origin and that 17 had ruminant contaminants. The results of quantitative PCR further showed that out of all 17 samples with ruminant contaminants, seven samples had bovine, ovine, and caprine contaminants, two samples had bovine and ovine contaminants, and eight samples had only ovine contaminants. In conclusion, the qualitative PCR system was found to be a relatively inexpensive, rapid, and flexible method of identifying the porcine origin of and ruminant contaminants in ICPH, while the quantitative PCR was found suitable to accurately analyze the components and contaminants in detail. Both methods are suitable for routine control assays for the evaluation of ICPH purity and origins of contaminants.