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Metformin (1,1-dimethylbiguanide) is an antihyperglycaemic drug used to normalize glucose concentrations in type 2 diabetes. Furthermore, antioxidant benefits have been reported in diabetic patients treated with metformin. This work was aimed at studying the scavenging capacity of this drug against reactive oxygen species (ROS) like·OH and-free radicals. ROS were produced by gamma radiolysis of water. The irradiated solutions of metformin were analyzed by UV/visible absorption spectrophotometry. It has been shown that hydroxyl free radicals react with metformin in a concentration-dependent way. The maximum scavenging activity was obtained for concentrations of metformin ≥ 200 µmol·L−1, under our experimental conditions. An estimated value of 107 L·mol−1·s−1 has been determined for the second order rate constantk(·OH + metformin). Superoxide free radicals and hydrogen peroxide do not initiate any oxidation on metformin in ourin vitroexperiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Swinfen Charitable Trust (SCT) provides an e-referral service for health practitioners in developing countries. Referral messages and responses are passed by email. We have developed a Web-based system to facilitate information retrieval from these messages and multimedia data mining. The system contains a search engine which implements full text searching, together with nearness-based retrieval. In pilot testing, cases with relatively high nearness ranking were reasonably near to the query cases. In addition, a Support Vector Machine (SVM) was used to classify cases into categories of gender and age. False positives did not increase significantly with the number of true positives, i.e. this represented very good classification performance. The system we have developed appears to be a promising way of storing and retrieving email-based medical correspondence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Saturated thalassic brines are among the most physically demanding habitats on Earth: few microbes survive in them. Salinibacter ruber is among these organisms and has been found repeatedly in significant numbers in climax saltern crystallizer communities. The phenotype of this bacterium is remarkably similar to that of the hyperhalophilic Archaea (Haloarchaea). The genome sequence suggests that this resemblance has arisen through convergence at the physiological level (different genes producing similar overall phenotype) and the molecular level (independent mutations yielding similar sequences or structures). Several genes and gene clusters also derive by lateral transfer from (or may have been laterally transferred to) haloarchaea. S. ruber encodes four rhodopsins. One resembles bacterial proteorhodopsins and three are of the halo-archaeal type, previously uncharacterized in a bacterial genome. The impact of these modular adaptive elements on the cell biology and ecology of S. ruber is substantial, affecting salt adaptation, bioenergetics, and photobiology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Pseudomonas putida is a metabolically versatile saprophytic soil bacterium that has been certified as a biosafety host for the cloning of foreign genes. The bacterium also has considerable potential for biotechnological applications. Sequence analysis of the 6.18 Mb genome of strain KT2440 reveals diverse transport and metabolic systems. Although there is a high level of genome conservation with the pathogenic Pseudomonad Pseudomonas aeruginosa (85% of the predicted coding regions are shared), key virulence factors including exotoxin A and type III secretion systems are absent. Analysis of the genome gives insight into the non-pathogenic nature of P. putida and points to potential new applications in agriculture, biocatalysis, bioremediation and bioplastic production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents the corrective reprint to a research article on complete genome sequence and comparative analysis of the metabolically versatile Pseudomonas putida KT2440 published in the 'Environmental Microbiology' periodical.