The sociopolitical in human genetics education.

Education must go beyond only countering essentialist and deterministic views of genetics.

Polyarthritis in wild mice (Mus musculus) caused by Streptobacillus moniliformis.

Mice trapped on farms in south-eastern Queensland had chronic abscessating osteoarthritides mainly involving the carpi and tarsi. Pleomorphic bacteria were shown by silver staining to be plentiful within lesions. Streptobacillus moniliformis was isolated from the joints, and streptobacillary polyarthritis was diagnosed. Other lesions observed included subcutaneous and hepatic abscesses.

Secure remote access to a clinical data repository using a wireless personal digital assistant (PDA).

TCP/IP and World-Wide-Web (WWW) technology have become the universal standards for networking and delivery of information. Personal digital assistants (PDAs), cellular telephones, and alphanumeric pagers are rapidly converging on a single pocket device that will leverage wireless TCP/IP networks and WWW protocols and can be used to deliver clinical information and alerts anytime, anywhere. We describe a wireless interface to clinical information for physicians based on Palm Corp.'s Palm VII pocket computer, a wireless digital network, encrypted data transmission, secure web servers, and a clinical data repository (CDR).

A novel governance system for enterprise information services.

The authors created a novel system for governing the enterprise information services (IS) of a large health care system. The governance organization is comprised of key members of the attending medical staff, hospital and health system administration, and the IS department. A method for defining the requirements and business case for proposed new systems was developed for use by departments requesting new or expanded information services. A Technology Architecture Guideline document was developed and approved to provide a framework for supported hardware and software technologies. IS policies are approved by the main governance council. All project proposals are reviewed by specialized governance committees and, if approved, are launched for further development. Fully developed proposals are reviewed, approved and prioritized for funding by the governance council. This novel organization provides the methodology and structure for enlightened peer review and funding for well developed IS project proposals.

Integrated web-based viewing and secure remote access to a clinical data repository and diverse clinical systems.

The advent of the World-Wide-Web protocols and client-server technology has made it easy to build low-cost, user-friendly, platform-independent graphical user interfaces to health information systems and to integrate the presentation of data from multiple systems. The authors describe a Web interface for a clinical data repository (CDR) that was moved from concept to production status in less than six months using a rapid prototyping approach, multi-disciplinary development team, and off-the-shelf hardware and software. The system has since been expanded to provide an integrated display of clinical data from nearly 20 disparate information systems.

Cloning of human cDNAs encoding mitochondrial and cytosolic serine hydroxymethyltransferases and chromosomal localization.

Human cDNAs for cytosolic and mitochondrial serine hydroxymethyltransferase (SHMT) were cloned by functional complementation of an Escherichia coli glyA mutant with a human cDNA library. The cDNA for the cytosolic enzyme encodes a 483-residue protein of M(r) 53,020. The cDNA for the mitochondrial enzyme encodes a mature protein of 474 residues of M(r) 52,400. The deduced protein sequences share a high degree of sequence identity to each other (63%), and the individual isozymes are highly homologous to the analogous rabbit liver cytosolic (92% identity) and mitochondrial (97% identity) SHMT isozymes (Martini, F., Angelaccio, S., Pascarella, S., Barra, D., Bossa, F., and Schirch, V. (1987) J. Biol. Chem. 262, 5499-5509; Martini, F., Maras, B., Tanci, P., Angelaccio, S., Pascarella, S., Barra, D., Bossa, F., and Schirch, V. (1989) J. Biol. Chem. 264, 8509-8519). SHMT is a highly conserved protein with the human isozymes retaining about 43% sequence identity with the E. coli protein. The human cytosolic and mitochondrial SHMT genes were localized to chromosome regions 17p11.2 and 12q13, respectively. The high degree of nucleotide sequence identity between the two isozymes, and the presence of keratin genes in both chromosomal regions, is consistent with these regions of chromosome 12 and 17 arising by a duplication event.