Pre-screening Method Research Articles

S90. Changing EEG ordering behavior based on modification of an electronic medical record ordering platform: Preliminary data

We observed that stat-EEGs are often requested for convenience rather than medical necessity leading to prolonged turn around times. Limited EEG technician availability, equipment availability and lack of clinical acumen are also hypothesized as additional contributors to the misuse of stat-EEG. At our institution, stat-EEGs represented 43% of all inpatient EEG studies between 9/2015 and 8/2016. We sought to reduce potential misuse of EEG by incorporating a prescreening process into the EEG order set. It was our hypothesis that a required prescreening method would guide ordering physicians to the proper EEG study type (Stat vs. Routine) and likely reduce the proportion of spot EEGs ordered as stat. The EMR ordering process for inpatient EEGs was updated with the pre-screening process in early 10/2017. If an urgent EEG is wanted by an ordering provider, the pre-screening process requires the provider to select from a list of indications for a stat EEG. These indications include: Coma or mental status change, Patient fails to wake up after a seizure, Suspicion of status epilepticus and Patient pharmacologically paralyzed. Post-EMR change data collection was started on 10/22/2017 had its rate of stat-EEGs calculated. This variable was compared to 1774 spot EEGs (routine and stat) ordered from 1/1/2017 to 10/21/2017. A subgroup analysis between daytime (7A-7P) and nighttime (7P-7A) studies was also performed. Continuous EEG studies were excluded from the analysis. 117 post-EMR change studies (61 STAT and 68 Routine) have so far been collected. There was a 7% decrease in the rate of stat-EEGs in the post-EMR change group (47.2%) when compared to the pre-EMR change group (54.6%). This did not reach statistical significance (p = 0.12). With subgroup analysis, there was an 11% decrease and 4% decrease in the rate of STAT EEGs during the day and night respectively. The difference in daytime rate of stat-EEGs reached near statistical significance (p = 0.06). Preliminary data of this ongoing QI project suggests that including a pre-screening process within an EMR EEG order set may alter ordering behavior. While there was a 7% decrease in the rate of STAT EEGs ordered it did not reach statistical significance due to a small post-EMR change group. Statistical significance might be reached with continuing data collection.

Wavelet based classification of MALDI-IMS-MS spectra of serum N-Linked glycans from normal controls and patients diagnosed with Barrett's esophagus, high grade dysplasia, and esophageal adenocarcinoma

Profiling of complex biological samples (e.g., serum) using mass spectrometry continues to be an active area of research with a large and growing literature. Pattern recognition techniques can be effective methods for the analysis of complex data sets generated in these types of studies. Currently, we are investigating the discrimination of disease phenotypes associated with esophageal adenocarcinoma by analysis of single N-linked glycans using matrix assisted laser desorption ionization-ion mobility spectrometry-mass spectrometry (MALDI-IMS-MS). The glycans were extracted from sera of healthy (normal) controls (NC) and patients diagnosed with Barrett's Esophagus (BE), high grade dysplasia (HGD), and esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC). MALDI-IMS-MS spectral images were collected in duplicate for these 58 serum samples: BE (14 individuals), HGD (7 individuals), EAC (20 individuals) and NC (17 individuals). Ion mobility distributions of N-linked glycans that possessed sufficient signal to noise in all 116 spectra were extracted from the images by box selection across a specific drift bin and m/z range corresponding to a single linked N-glycan ion. A composite ion mobility distribution profile was obtained for each image by sequentially splicing together the mobility distributions of each N-linked glycan across an arbitrary drift bin axis. Wavelet preprocessing of the composite ion mobility distribution profiles was performed using the discrete wavelet transform, which was coupled to a genetic algorithm for variable selection to identify a subset of wavelet coefficients within the data set that optimized the separation of the four classes (BE, HGD, EAC, and NC) in a plot of the two largest principal components of the wavelet transformed data. A discriminant developed from the wavelet coefficients identified by the pattern recognition GA correctly classified all ion mobility distribution profiles in the training set (45 individuals and 87 distribution profiles) and 23 of 26 blinds (13 individuals and 26 distribution profiles) in the prediction set. The proposed MALDI-IMS-MS and pattern recognition methodology has the potential to exploit molecules in serum samples that can serve as the basis of a potential method for cancer prescreening.

Pre-screening method for somatic cell contamination in human sperm epigenetic studies

ABSTRACTSperm epigenetic profiles are frequently studied and are of great interest in many fields. One major technical concern when assessing these marks is the potential for somatic cell contamination. Because somatic cells have dramatically different epigenetic signatures, even small levels of contamination can result in significant problems in analysis and interpretation of data. In this study we evaluate an assay, which we designed to offer a reliable ‘pre-screen’ for somatic cell contamination that directly assesses the DNA being used in the study to determine tissue purity. In brief, we designed an inexpensive and simple assay that utilizes the strong differential methylation between sperm and somatic cells at four genomic loci to assess the general purity of samples prior to performing expensive and time intensive assays. The assay is able to reliably detect contamination qualitatively by running the sample on an agarose gel, or quantitatively with the use of a bioanalyzer. With this technique we have found that we can detect potentially contaminating signals in samples of many different types, including those from patients with poor sperm phenotypes (oligozoospermia, asthenozoospermia, and teratozoospermia). We also have found that the use of multiple sites to determine potential contamination is key, as some conditions (asthenozoospermia specifically) appear at one site to reflect a somatic-like profile, while at all other sites it appears to have very typical sperm DNA methylation signatures. Taken together, the use of the assay described herein was effective at identifying contamination and could be implemented in many labs to quickly and inexpensively pre-screen samples prior to performing far more expensive and labor intensive procedures. Additionally, the principles applied to the development of this assay could be easily adapted for the development of other assays to pre-screen different tissue/cell types or model organisms.

Eigenvalue-Based Urban Area Extraction Using Polarimetric SAR Data

Urban area extraction using polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) data has become a potential mean to urban studies because it holds the promise that the radar returns from specific scattering characteristics may be emphasized. Due to the high variability of urban land-scape and the existing misdetection of buildings as vegetation, urban area extraction is still a challenging problem. In this paper, an eigenvalue-based urban area extraction method is proposed. First, similar to the entropy/anisotropy plane, a two-dimensional RVI/PA plane is put forward to construct the extractor of buildings with small orientation angles. Second, coupled with the parameters, a robust extractor is introduced to elevate the scattering characteristics of buildings with large orientation angles but to suppress those of others. Finally, data-driven thresholds are investigated and ascertained for the extractors, thus urban areas are extracted. In addition, a change detection-based prescreening method is applied to refine the extraction result. The performance of the proposed method is demonstrated and validated with spaceborne and airborne fully PolSAR data over different test sites. The outputs show that the proposed method provides an overall accuracy of over 90%, as well as better visual results of the extracted buildings.

X-ray Generated Recombination Exciplexes of Substituted Diphenylacetylenes with Tertiary Amines: A Versatile Experimental Vehicle for Targeted Creation of Deep-Blue Electroluminescent Systems.

Customizable and technology-friendly functional materials are one of the mainstays of emerging organic electronics and optoelectronics. We show that recombination exciplexes of simple substituted diphenylacetylenes with tertiary amines can be a convenient source of tunable deep-blue emission with possible applications in organic electroluminescent systems. The optically inaccessible exciplexes were produced via recombination of radiation-generated radical ion pairs in alkane solution, which mimics charge transport and recombination in the active layer of practical organic light-emitting diodes in a simple solution-based experiment. Despite varying and rather poor intrinsic emission properties, diphenylacetylene and its prototypical methoxy (donor) or trifluoromethyl (acceptor) monosubstituted derivatives readily form recombination exciplexes with N,N-dimethylaniline and other tertiary amines that produce emission with maxima ranging from 385 to 435 nm. The position of emission band maximum linearly correlates with readily calculated gas-phase electron affinity of the corresponding diphenylacetylene, which can be used for fast computational prescreening of the candidate molecules, and various substituted diphenylacetylenes can be synthesized via relatively simple and universal cross-coupling reactions of Sonogashira and Castro. Together, the simple solution-based experiment, computationally cheap prescreening method, and universal synthetic strategy may open a very broad and chemically convenient class of compounds to obtain OLEDs and OLED-based multifunctional devices with tunable emission spectrum and high conversion efficiency that has yet not been seriously considered for these purposes.

A real-time fuzzy morphological algorithm for retinal vessel segmentation

The detection of vessels is the first step towards an automatic diagnosis and in-depth study of retinal images to aid ophthalmologists. In this paper, a real-time algorithm based on fuzzy morphological techniques is introduced to segment vessels in retinal images. This framework provides a good trade-off between expressive power and computational requirements, since the information in the local neighbourhood is quickly processed by combining a series of fast procedures. Specifically, this method is based on the fuzzy black top-hat transform, which proves to be a simple yet very effective technique. The algorithm processes images of the DRIVE and STARE datasets, in average, in 37 and 57 ms, respectively. Thus, it can be employed while a patient is being examined, embedded into more complex systems or as a pre-screening method for large volumes of data. It outstands when it is compared with other state-of-the-art methodologies in terms of its real-time processing time and its competitive performance.

Frequent NRG1 fusions in Caucasian pulmonary mucinous adenocarcinoma predicted by Phospho-ErbB3 expression.

NRG1 fusions were recently reported as a new molecular feature of Invasive Mucinous Adenocarcinoma (IMA) of the lung. The NRG1 chimeric ligand acts as a strong inductor of phosphorylation and tyrosine kinase activity of the ErbB2/ErbB3 heterodimer, thus enhancing the PI3K–AKT/MAPK pathways. The NRG1 fusions were widely investigated in Asian IMA cohorts, whereas just anecdotal information are available about the occurrence of NRG1 fusions in IMA Caucasian population.Here we firstly explored a large Caucasian cohort of 51 IMAs and 34 non-IMA cases for the occurrence of NRG1 rearrangements by fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) and RNA target sequencing. FISH results were correlated to the immunohistochemical expression of phosphorylated-ErbB3 (pErbB3) receptor and the mutational status of KRAS, EGFR and ALK genes.The NRG1 rearrangements were detected in 31% IMAs and 3% non-IMAs and the CD74-NRG1 fusion transcript variant was characterized in 4 NRG1-positive IMAs. Moreover, pErbB3 expression was found to be strictly associated to the mucinous pattern (p = 0.012, Chi-square test) and all IMA cases showing aberrant expression of pErbB3 demonstrated NRG1 rearrangements. No significant correlation between NRG1 rearrangements and EGFR, KRAS or ALK mutations respectively, was observed.We report for the first time that NRG1 fusions are driver alterations clearly associated with mucinous lung adenocarcinoma subtype of Caucasian patients and not exclusive of Asiatic population. pErbB3 immunostaining may represent a strong predictor of NRG1 fusions, pointing out the detection of pErbB3 by IHC as a rapid and effective pre-screening method to select the NRG1-positive patients.

A Pre-screening method for cardiac anomalies detection using phonocardiography signals

A Pre-screening method for cardiac anomalies detection using phonocardiography signals

Conditioning Electrical Impedance Mammography System

A multi-frequency Electrical Impedance Mammography (EIM) system has been developed to evaluate the conductivity and permittivity spectrums of breast tissues, which aims to improve early detection of breast cancer as a non-invasive, relatively low cost and label-free screening (or pre-screening) method. Multi-frequency EIM systems typically employ current excitations and measure differential potentials from the subject under test. Both the output impedance and system performance (SNR and accuracy) depend on the total output resistance, stray and output capacitances, capacitance at the electrode level, crosstalk at the chip and PCB levels. This makes the system design highly complex due to the impact of the unwanted capacitive effects, which substantially reduce the output impedance of stable current sources and bandwidth of the data that can be acquired. To overcome these difficulties, we present new methods to design a high performance, wide bandwidth EIM system using novel second generation current conveyor operational amplifiers based on a gyrator (OCCII-GIC) combination with different current excitation systems to cancel unwanted capacitive effects from the whole system. We reconstructed tomography images using a planar E-phantom consisting of an RSC circuit model with different set of values, which represents the resistance of extra-cellular (R), intra-cellular (S) and membrane capacitance (C) of the breast tissues to validate the performance of the system. The experimental results demonstrated that an EIM system with the new design achieved a high output impedance of 10 MΩ at 1 MHz to at least 3 MΩ at 3 MHz frequency, with an average SNR and modelling accuracy of over 80 dB and 99%, respectively.

Solid-Phase Agar Plate Assay for Screening Amine Transaminases.

Agar plate assays represent a useful method for high-throughput prescreening of larger enzyme libraries derived from for example error-prone PCR or multiple site-saturation mutagenesis to decrease screening effort by separating promising variants from less active, inactive, or neutral variants. In order to do so, colonies are directly applied for enzyme expression and screening on adsorbent and microporous membranes instead of elaborately preparing cell lysates in 96-well plates. This way, 400-800 enzyme variants can be prescreened on a single membrane, 10,000-20,000 variants per week and per single researcher respectively (25 membranes per week).The following chapter gives a detailed protocol of how to screen transaminase libraries in solid phase, but it also intends to provide inspiration to establish a direct or coupled agar plate assay for screening variable enzymatic activities by interchanging assay enzymes and adapting assay conditions to individual needs.

Two new hirsutane-type sesquiterpenoids chondrosterins N and O from the marine fungus Chondrostereum sp.

The marine fungus Chondrostereum sp. was collected from a soft coral Sarcophyton tortuosum from the South China Sea. This fungus was cultured in glucose-peptone-yeast (GPY) medium and the culture broth was extracted with EtOAc. By the method of 1H NMR pre-screening and tracing the diagnostic proton signals of the methyl groups, two new hirsutane-type sesquiterpenoids, chondrosterins N and O (1 and 2) were isolated from the metabolite extracts. Their structures were elucidated on the basis of MS, 1D and 2D NMR data.

Pre-surgery evaluations by telephone decrease travel and cost for families of children with cerebral palsy.

Introduction:Children with cerebral palsy need highly specialized care. This can be very burdensome for families, particularly in large rural states, due to the need for long-distance travel to appointments. In this study, children undergoing the selective percutaneous myofascial lengthening surgery utilized a telephone-based telemedicine evaluation to assess for surgical eligibility. The goal was to avoid a separate preoperative clinic visit weeks before the surgery. If possible, eligibility was determined by telephone, and then, the patient could be scheduled for a clinic visit and possible surgery the next day, saving the family a trip. The purposes of the study were to calculate estimated reductions in miles traveled, in travel expenses, and in carbon emissions and to determine whether the telephone assessment was accurate and effective in determining eligibility for surgery.Methods:From 2010 to 2012, 279 patients were retrospectively reviewed, and of those, 161 mailed four-page questionnaire and anteroposterior pelvis X-ray followed by a telephone conference. Geographic information system methods were used to geocode patients by location. Savings in mileage and travel costs were calculated. From 2014 to 2015, 195 patients were additionally studied to determine accuracy and effectiveness.Results:The telephone prescreening method saved 106,070 miles in transportation over 3 years, a 38% reduction with US$55,326 in savings. Each family saved an average of 658 (standard deviation = 340) miles of travel and US$343.64 (standard deviation = US$178) in travel expenses. For each increase of 10 miles in distance from the health center, the odds of a patient utilizing telephone screening increased by 10% (odds ratio: 1.101, 95% confidence interval: 1.073–1.129, p < 0.001). After the telephone prescreening, 86% were determined to be likely candidates for the procedure. For 14%, a clinic visit only was scheduled, and they were not scheduled for surgery.Conclusion:Families seeking specialized surgical care for their disabled children particularly benefited from this approach.

Bisphenol A alternatives in thermal paper from the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Norway. Screening and potential toxicity

Thermal paper contains potentially toxic additives, such as bisphenol A (BPA), as a common color developer. Because of its known endocrine disrupting effects, structural analogues to BPA, such as bisphenol S (BPS), D-8 and Pergafast 201, have been used as alternatives, but little is known about the presence and toxicological effects of alternatives other than BPS. In this study, thermal paper is screened by direct probe ambient mass spectrometry (rapid pre-screening method not requiring sample preparation) and by liquid chromatography (LC) with high resolution time-of flight (TOF-MS) mass spectrometry. Cash receipts and other thermal paper products (cinema tickets, boarding passes and luggage tags) were analyzed. Besides BPA and BPS, other developers only recently reported (Pergafast 201, D-8) or to the best of our knowledge not reported before (D-90, TGSA, BPS-MAE) were frequently found as well as some related unreported impurities (2,4-BPS that is a BPS related impurity and a TGSA related impurity). To gain some insight into the potential estrogenicity of the detected developers, a selection of extracts was further analyzed using a LC-nanofractionation platform in combination with cell-based bioassay testing. These preliminary results seems to indicate very low or absence of estrogenic activity for Pergafast 201, D-8, D-90, TGSA and BPS-MAE in comparison to BPA and BPS, although further dose-response tests with authentic standards are required to confirm these results. Compounds for which standards were available were also tested for developmental toxicity and neurotoxicity using zebrafish (Danio rerio) embryos. TGSA and D-8 induced similar teratogenic effects as BPA in zebrafish embryos. BPS and 2,4-BPS did not induce any developmental effects but 2,4-BPS did alter the locomotor activity at the tested concentration. Our findings suggest that the alternatives used as alternatives to BPA (except BPS) might not be estrogenic. However, TGSA and D-8 showed abnormal developmental effects similar to BPA.

Evaluation of ALK gene rearrangement in central nervous system metastases of non-small-cell lung cancer using two-step RT-PCR technique

PurposeRT-PCR technique has showed a promising value as pre-screening method for detection of mRNA containing abnormal ALK sequences, but its sensitivity and specificity is still discussable. Previously, we determined the incidence of ALK rearrangement in CNS metastases of NSCLC using IHC and FISH methods.MaterialsWe evaluated ALK gene rearrangement using two-step RT-PCR method with EML4-ALK Fusion Gene Detection Kit (Entrogen, USA). The studied group included 145 patients (45 females, 100 males) with CNS metastases of NSCLC and was heterogeneous in terms of histology and smoking status.Results21% of CNS metastases of NSCLC (30/145) showed presence of mRNA containing abnormal ALK sequences. FISH and IHC tests confirmed the presence of ALK gene rearrangement and expression of ALK abnormal protein in seven patients with positive result of RT-PCR analysis (4.8% of all patients, 20% of RT-PCR positive patients). RT-PCR method compared to FISH analysis achieved 100% of sensitivity and only 82.7% of specificity. IHC method compared to FISH method indicated 100% of sensitivity and 97.8% of specificity. In comparison to IHC, RT-PCR showed identical sensitivity with high number of false positive results.ConclusionUtility of RT-PCR technique in screening of ALK abnormalities and in qualification patients for molecularly targeted therapies needs further validation.

Metal carbonyl-gold nanoparticle conjugates for highly sensitive SERS detection of organophosphorus pesticides

The binding of organometallic osmium carbonyl clusters onto the surface of gold nanoparticles (10OsCO-Au NPs) greatly enhanced the CO stretching vibration signal at ~2100cm−1, which is relatively free from interference due to the absorbance of biomolecules. By utilizing the acetylcholinesterase (AChE) mediated hydrolysis of acetylthiocholine to thiocholine where the activity of AChE is inhibited by the presence of organophosphate pesticides (OPPs), the subsequent thiocholine-induced aggregation of 10OsCO-Au NPs can be monitored by the change in color of the NPs solution and the variation in intensity of the SERS CO signal. The change in color offers a fast pre-screening method, whereas monitoring via SERS is used for greater accuracy and lower limit of detection (0.1 ppb) for quantitative detection. Its potential as a quick and accurate method of OPPs monitoring in consumer products was demonstrated in the detection of OPPs in real spiked samples such as beer.

Quantitative Mapping of Intranuclear Diffusion in Living Cells by Phasor Analysis of Local RICS

Image Correlation Spectroscopy (ICS) (Wiseman, Cold Spring Harb. Protoc. 2015) based techniques are quantitative tools for assessing the concentration and dynamics of proteins diffusing in living cells. A wide variety of these methods (ICS, ICCS, RICS, kICS etc.) is applicable to commercial laser scanning microscopes in order to investigate subcellular biophysical properties, for instance the study of protein mobility within the nucleus of eukaryotic cells. Although powerful, these techniques may fail to retrieve a correct value when analyzing inhomogeneous samples, given that no further assumption is made on the specific nature of the inhomogeneity. Being the cell an intrinsically heterogeneous system, a prescreening method for the characterization of the heterogeneity of the system will increase the reliability of ICS techniques for cellular applications.In this respect, we recently introduced a method, based on the phasor analysis of local ICS (PLICS), for extending ICS to heterogeneous systems without the need of a priori assumptions (Scipioni et al., Biophys. J. 2016). The phasor approach, originally developed for the identification of components in fluorescence-lifetime imaging (Digman et al., Biophys. J. 2008), is used within the PLICS algorithm for the analysis of local spatial correlation functions as a fast and unbiased alternative to the fitting procedure. Here we present application of the PLICS concept to Raster Image Correlation Spectroscopy (RICS) (Digman et al., Biophys. J. 2005) for obtaining a map of intra-nuclear diffusion of expressed EGFP in living HeLa cells. The PLICS approach is used to provide a segmentation of the image into sub-regions with homogeneous diffusion coefficient, that is successively quantified by applying Arbitrary Regions Image Correlation Spectroscopy (ARICS) (Hendrix et al., Biophys. J. 2016),a state of the art technique developed for extending the ICS analysis to non-rectangular regions.We believe that PLICS could become a widely used prescreening approach, applicable to several kinds of ICS techniques, for addressing the heterogeneity of a dataset prior to the application of the technique. Furthermore, if the statistics is significant, PLICS is capable of providing an exhaustive mapping over the entire dataset of the property we are willing to measure.

Combined Whole-Cell High-Throughput Functional Screening for Identification of New Nicotinamidases/Pyrazinamidases in Metagenomic/Polygenomic Libraries.

Nicotinamidases catalyze the hydrolysis of the amide bond in nicotinamide (NAM) to produce ammonia and nicotinic acid (NA). These enzymes are an essential component of the NAD+ salvage pathway and are implicated in the viability of several pathogenic organisms. Its absence in humans makes them a promising drug target. In addition, although they are key analytical biocatalysts for screening modulators in relevant biomedical enzymes, such as sirtuins and poly-ADP-ribosyltransferases, no commercial sources are available. Surprisingly, the finding of an affordable source of nicotinamidase from metagenomic libraries is hindered by the absence of a suitable and fast screening method. In this manuscript, we describe the development of two new whole-cell methods using the chemical property of one of the products formed in the enzymatic reaction (pyrazinoic or NA) to form colored complexes with stable iron salts, such as ammonium ferrous sulfate or sodium nitroprusside (SNP). After optimization of the assay conditions, a fosmid polygenomic expression library obtained from deep-sea mesophilic bacteria was screened, discovering several positive clones with the ammonium ferrous sulfate method. Their quantitative rescreening with the SNP method allowed the finding of the first nicotinamidase with balanced catalytic efficiency toward NAM (nicotinamidase activity) and pyrazinamide (pyrazinamidase activity). Its biochemical characterization has also made possible the development of the first high-throughput whole-cell method for prescreening of new nicotinamidase inhibitors by the naked eye, saving time and costs in the design of future antimicrobial and antiparasitic agents.

Adaptive and Fast Prescreening for SAR ATR via Change Detection Technique

Change detection is a process of identifying changes in the state of objects between the reference and test images. This letter presents a target prescreening method that employs the change detection technique for automatic target recognition in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. First, four translated versions of an original SAR image are generated, and the corresponding four likelihood ratio images are computed. Then, a robust threshold is derived from the ratio of the histogram at two adjacent gray-level values of the likelihood ratio images. Finally, the threshold is applied to perform the prescreening. The proposed method implements the procedure without any prior knowledge and overcomes the weak adaptability of traditional algorithms. Two different real X-band airborne SAR images acquired over Beijing are used to quantitatively and qualitatively demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

High Resolution Melting (HRM) analysis on &lt;em&gt;VviDXS&lt;/em&gt; to reveal muscats or non-muscats among autochthonous Greek wine producing grape varieties

&lt;p style="text-align: justify;"&gt;Muscat flavor in grapes is associated with a substitution of a Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) located at position 1822 (SNP&lt;sub&gt;1822G&amp;gt;T&lt;/sub&gt;) within the coding sequence of the &lt;em&gt;VviDXS&lt;/em&gt; gene. Various methods, including the use of High Resolution Melting (HRM) analysis, have been suggested to discriminate different SNP allelic states including the molecular discrimination of the muscat from the non-muscat grape varieties, thus providing the ability to minimize lengthy grape breeding programs when selecting for grape muscat flavor before the fruit maturity stage. HRM analysis on the SNP&lt;sub&gt;1822&lt;/sub&gt; was performed on a group of 128 wine producing grape varieties in order to separate the muscat from the non-muscat genotypes before they are used for further breeding activities. This approach could be used either as a single-step prescreening method or in accordance with recently published methodology to elucidate on varietal characterization and authentication as these are important requirements concerning nurseries, growers and winemakers.&lt;/p&gt;

Additional New Cytotoxic Triquinane-Type Sesquiterpenoids Chondrosterins K-M from the Marine Fungus Chondrostereum sp.

By the method of 1H NMR prescreening and tracing the diagnostic proton signals of the methyl groups, three additional new triquinane-type sesquiterpenoids—chondrosterins K–M (1–3) and the known sesquiterpenoid anhydroarthrosporone (4)—were isolated from the marine fungus Chondrostereum sp. Their structures were elucidated on the basis of MS, 1D, and 2D NMR data. Chondrosterin K is a rare hirsutane sesquiterpenoid, in which a methyl group was migrated from C-2 to C-6 and has a double bond between C-2 and C-3. Compounds 1–3 showed significant cytotoxicities against various cancer cell lines in vitro.