Search

The article discusses trachoma, a blinding eye disease common among underdeveloped areas. Accordingly, the author has emphasized the need to improve hygiene, housing and nutrition in order to battle the endemic. His discussion covers facts which explain the prevalence of the illness among young children, its early symptoms and how it is transmitted to other persons. The project initiated by the World Health Organization, emphasizing on the systematic treatment of all infected school children with appropriate drugs is likewise discussed.

A Sardinian pedigree described in 1964 for having been found to segregate at the X-linked loci for the Xga antigen, G6PD deficiency, Protan and Deutan color blindness, with an instance of recombination between the last two loci, was re-examined with respect to four common X-linked DNA polymorphisms detected by molecular probes homologous to critical subregions of the human X chromosome. Two branches of this pedigree-including the one with the Protan-Deutan recombinant-were found to segregate also for the common BamHI polymorphism identified with the cDNA probe pHPT-2 of the HPRT gene (Xq26). The analysis of the chromosome haplotypes in the male offspring of the phase known penta-heterozygous mother suggests that the probable order of the relevant loci is HPRT, Deutan, G6PD, Protan, Xq telomere. Though we are fully aware of the risks of generalizing the significance of observations made on a single exceptional pedigree, we believe that this report outlines the potential of families of the type described as reasearch tools to resolve the linear order of tightly X-linked loci and to investigate the biology of genetic recombination in humans.

The lithium phthalocyaninate(1−) iodine inclusion complex [(Lipc⁻)·I], prepared by the reaction of anhydrous lithium iodide with molten 1,2-dicyanobenzene, crystallizes tetragonally in the space group P4/mcc with a = 14.057(3) Å, b = 6.397(1) Å, V = 1264.0(4) ų, Z = 2. Lithium is in a crystallographically imposed strictly square planar coordination geometry with a Li–N distance of 1.940(7) Å. Linear chains of equidistant iodine atoms are segregated from adjacent metal-over-metal stacks of the planar lithium phthalocyaninate(1−) molecules, which are staggered by 40.2(5)°. Resonance Raman spectra have been studied in comparison with those of the starch–iodine complex [(starch)·I]. The identity of the iodine chromophore in both complexes is essentially the same. It consists of an iodine chain in a hydrophobic environment. Its character is predominately ‘aliphatic’ in [(starch)·I] and ‘aromatic’ in [(Lipc⁻)·I]. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.