Foreign body removal assisted by an intraoral ultrasound probe.

Ultrasonography has recently been applied to the field of oral and maxillofacial surgery because of its noninvasiveness and ease of use. However, traditional transducers are not used in the intraoral area because of their large size. A novel intraoral transducer was introduced with size, volume, and axis modifications. This new transducer allows the surgeon to approach the intraoral region during dental procedures. This report describes a case of successful removal of a foreign body using the newly developed intraoral ultrasound probe. Precise localization and minimally invasive removal of the foreign body using the intraoral transducer were simultaneously conducted. Because of its many advantages, this intraoral ultrasound transducer has the potential to be applied in oral and maxillofacial surgery.

Reduced protease activity in transformed rice cell suspension cultures expressing a proteinase inhibitor.

In this study, we synthesized a synthetic serine proteinase inhibitor II gene (sPI-II) that harbored the chymotrypsin and trypsin inhibitor domains of the PI-II gene from Nicotiana alata. In an effort to reduce protease activity in a rice cell suspension culture, we first synthesized sPI-II using overlap PCR and then introduced the gene into a rice calli (Oryza sativa L. cv. Dongin) by particle bombardment-mediated transformation. The sPI-II gene was under the control of a rice alpha-amylase 3D promoter induced by sugar starvation. To verify the integration and expression of the sPI-II gene in the transformed rice cells, we employed genomic DNA PCR amplification and Northern blot analysis, respectively. The relative protease activity of the transformed cell suspension culture was reduced to approximately 23% when compared to the non-transformed culture. This indicates that a transformed suspension culture system expressing a proteinase inhibitor, may be a useful tool to protect against recombinant protein losses resulting from extracellular proteases.