Abstract: A neurostimulator incorporating a novel chip design that uses the principle of redundant signal crossfiring to overcome electronic component mismatch error in general and transistor mismatch error in particular, to yield superior quality neurostimulation signal generation, useful in enhancing the bidirectional human-machine interface in prosthesis operation for the restoration of somatosensation for an amputee; and an improvement thereof additionally comprising a digital-to-analog converter device, that includes a number of unit cells, each unit cell being associated with a unit cell size indicating manufacturing specifications of the unit cell, and that further includes a plurality of switches, each being coupled to a component, and an output electrode coupled to the plurality of switches, and wherein the digital-to-analog converter device is configured to output an output signal at the output electrode.

Abstract: To maximize the yield of protein from a baculovirus system, optimal infection of the host cell culture must be achieved; in order to obtain such optimal infection, the titer of the virus inoculation must be known. The present invention is the development of a simple, rapid, and universally applicable titration method that involves the direct detection of the viral DBP gene derived from AcNPV (AcNPV DBP) as a target for quantitative titer determination of baculovirus and the use of biotin specific probes directed to viral DBP gene. The procedure entails the amplification of the AcNPV DBP gene by using the PCR technique in the presence of digoxigenin-11-dUTP from the negative control (non-infected) and infected samples, and the synthesis of the specific biotin label nucleotide probes directed to the AcNPV DBP gene.

Abstract: Autographa californica nucleopolyhedrovirus (AcNPV) is a baculovirus widely employed as a vector for the expression of foreign genes and pest control. Although baculoviruses efficiently replicate in the nuclei of arthropod cells, the dynamics and mechanism of DNA replication within the infected cell are still poorly understood. Thus, to study such viral DNA replication, the availability of peptide ligands specific for DNA-binding protein (DBP) is needed. This work resulted in the selection of peptide ligands specifically binding to DBP for AcNPV from the FliTrx™ random peptide display library, which entails the amplification, cloning of the DBP gene from AcNPV, the construction of the expression plasmid for DBP, and the expression and purification of the recombinant His.Tag AcNPV DBP which was used as a target molecule for the selection of the peptide ligands. The affinity of peptide ligands was measured by ELISA procedures.