Insights to antimicrobial resistance: heavy metals can inhibit antibiotic resistance in bacteria isolated from wastewater

A large body of literature is available on wound healing in humans. Nonetheless, a standardized ex vivo wound model without disruption of the dermal compartment has not been put forward with compelling justification. Here, we present a novel wound model based on application of negative pressure and its effects for epidermal regeneration and immune cell behaviour. Importantly, the basement membrane remained intact after blister roof removal and keratinocytes were absent in the wounded area. Upon six days of culture, the wound was covered with one to three-cell thick K14+Ki67+ keratinocyte layers, indicating that proliferation and migration were involved in wound closure. After eight to twelve days, a multi-layered epidermis was formed expressing epidermal differentiation markers (K10, filaggrin, DSG-1, CDSN). Investigations about immune cell-specific manners revealed more T cells in the blister roof epidermis compared to normal epidermis. We identified several cell populations in blister roof epidermis and suction blister fluid that are absent in normal epidermis which correlated with their decrease in the dermis, indicating a dermal efflux upon negative pressure. Together, our model recapitulates the main features of epithelial wound regeneration, and can be applied for testing wound healing therapies and investigating underlying mechanisms.

Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) is a sequence similarity search program. The public interface of BLAST, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast, at the NCBI website has recently been reengineered to improve usability and performance. Key new features include simplified search forms, improved navigation, a list of recent BLAST results, saved search strategies and a documentation directory. Here, we describe the BLAST web application's new features, explain design decisions and outline plans for future improvement.