Cloned fragments of the plasmid ColV,I-K94 specifying virulence and serum resistance.

A cloned BamH1-generated fragment of ColV,I-K94 increased the virulence of Escherichia coli, causing an approximately 100-fold reduction in LD50 for chicks. A genetic determinant for resistance to the bactericidal effects of serum was mapped to a 5,300 base-pair sequence within the fragment. Neither colicin V nor immunity to colicin V affected the pathogenicity of E. coli for chicks.     

A structurally abnormal insulin causing human diabetes.

Insulin isolated from the pancreas of a diabetic patient with fasting hyperinsulinaemia showed decreased activity in binding to cell membrane insulin receptors and in stimulating cellular 2-deoxyglucose transport and glucose oxidation. Chemical studies suggest that the isolated hormone is a mixture of normal insulin and an abnormal variant which contains a leucine for phenylalanine substitution at position 24 or 25 of the insulin B-chain.     

Inhibition of platelet thrombus formation by chlorpromazine acting to diminish haemolysis.

There is increasing evidence that the sudden, unpredicatable event initiating myocardial infarction is fissuring of an atherosclerotic plaque. The resulting haemorrhage into the arterial wall produces obstructive platelet thrombi, just as arterial haemorrhages elsewhere produce haemostatic platelet plugs. It has been suggested that such platelet aggregation depends on ADP originating in red cells which are subjected to excessive haemodynamic stress at the site of haemorrhage. The release of ADP from red cells has been demonstrated in vitro in equivalent condtions of shear stress; and other mechansims, such as activation by collagen, cannot account for the rapidity with which the platelets react. One of us (G.V.R.B.) has suggested that drugs capable of counteracting haemolysis might diminish the activating effect of erythrocytes on platelets and so inhibit their aggregation as thrombi. Thus, chlorpromazine, added to human blood at concentrations which diminish haemoylsis but do not directly affect platelet aggregation, prolonged the 'bleeding time' from small holes in artificial vessels where extravasation is terminated, as in living arterioles, by aggregated platelets. The bleeding time was also prolonged by apyrase, consistent with the conclusion that the chlorpromazine acted through decreasing plasma ADP. We show here that this occurs through the anti-haemolytic action of chlorpromazine.