abstract Cell metabolite analysis is of great interest to analytical chemists and physiologists, with some meta-bolites having been identified as important indicators of major diseases such as cancer. A high-throughput and sensitive method for drug metabolite analysis will largely promote the drug discovery industry. The basic barrier of metabolite analysis comes from the interference of complex components in cell biological system and low abundance of target substances. As a powerful tool in biosample analysis, microfluidic chip enhances the sensitivity and throughput by integrating multiple functional units into one chip. In this review, we discussed three critical steps of establishing functional microfluidic platform for cellular metabolism study. Cell in vitro culture model, on chip sample pretreatment, and microchip combined detectors were described in details and demonstrated by works in five years. And a brief summary was given to discuss the advantages as well as challenges of applying microchip method in cell metabolite and biosample analysis.

TORCH test that include serological and nucleic acid tests for Toxoplasmosis, other virus, rubella virus, cytomegalovirus and herpes simplex virus is a group of test markers for screening TORCH infection during pregnancy, organ transplantation and serious diseases. For correct application of TORCH testa in clinical laboratories, it is very important to establish reasonable teat procedure and to give an correct interpretation of TORCH test results.

Objective To explore the effects of microwave radiation from interphone on the electrocardiogram of occupational population. Methods 165 male security personnels (working age: 0.5-3.32 a) often exposed to microwave radiation from interphone and 80 male staffs (working age: 0.5-3.58 a) without exposure to microwave radiation in a same security guard company were selected for examination of electrocardiogram in June-July,2004. Results The prevalences of sinus arrhythmia,sinus bradycardia,and the total abnormal rate of electrocardiogram in exposure group were significantly higher than those in control group(P

A simple and rapid expression and purification method of recombinant firefly luciferase was developed for bacteria detection. A modified luciferase gene from North American firefly Photinus pyralis was cloned into pET28a expression vector and the recombinant protein was produced in Escherichia coli BL21. The recombinant luciferase, equipped with a polyhistidine affinity tag, was purified by immobilized metal ion affinity chromatography (IMAC). The approach generated an abundant expression and an efficient purification of a recombinant luciferase with final yield 1.995mg/L of cell culture. Experiments on the recombinant luciferase also showed that the relative light units (RUL) of the enzyme were 5.8×108, and the specific activity was 2.9×1010 RLU/mg. By applying adenosine triphosphate (ATP) bioluminescence to detection of the coin bacteria using the recombinant protein, the ATP content of bacteria was 9.48×10-16mol/mL, and was identical to the bacteria counts (4500CFU/mL) in order of magnitude. Taken together, our results provided a simple and efficacious method of the preparation of recombinant luciferase, which could be applied in the determination of bacteria via ATP bioluminescence.

Glypican-3 （GPC3） is reported as a great promising tumor marker for hepatocellular carcinoma （HCC） diagnosis. Highly sensitive and accurate analysis of serum GPC3 （sGPC3）, in combination with or instead of traditional HCC marker alpha-fetoprotein （AFP）, is essential for early diagnosis of I-ICC. Biomaterial-functionalized magnetic particles have been utilized as solid supports with good biological compatibility for sensitive immunoassay. Here, the magnetic nanoparticles （MnPs） and magnetic microparticles （MmPs） with carboxyl groups were further modified with streptavidin, and applied for the development of chemiluminescence enzyme immunoassay （CLEIA）. After comparing between MnPs- and MmPs-based CLEIA, MnPs-based CLEIA was proved to be a better method with less assay time, greater sensitivity, better linearity and longer chemiluminescence platform. MnPs-based CLEIA was applied for detection of sGPC3 in normal liver, hepatocirrhosis, secondary liver cancer and HCC serum samples. The results indicated that sGPC3 was effective in diagnosis of HCC with high performance.

A chemiluminescence enzyme immunoassay based on magnetic microparicles (MmPsCLEIA) was developed to evaluate serum α-fetoprotein (AFP) in parallel with tramional colorimetric enzyme-linked immunsorbrnt assay (ELISA).A sestematic comparison between the MmPs-CLEIA and colorimetric ELISA concluded that the MPs-CLEIA exhibited fewer of immunoreagents,less total assay time,and better linearity,recovery,precision,senitivity and validity.AFP was detected in forty human serum samples by the proposed MPs-CLEIA and ELISA,and the results werecompared with commercial electrochemilunminescence immunoassay (ECLIA) kit.The correlation coefficient between MPs-CLEIA and ELISA was obtained with R2=0.6703; however,the correlation between MPs-CLEIA and ECLIA (R2=0.9582) was obviously better than that between colorimetric ELISA and ECLIA (R2=0.6866).

Glypican-3 (GPC3) is reported as a great promising tumor marker for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) diagnosis.Highly sensitive and accurate analysis of serum GPC3 (sGPC3),in combination with or instead of traditional HCC marker alpha-fetoprotein (AFP),is essential for early diagnosis of HCC.Biomaterial-functionalized magnetic particles have been utilized as solid supports with good biological compatibility for sensitive immunoassay.Here,the magnetic nanoparticles (MnPs) and magnetic microparticles (MmPs) with carboxyl groups were further modified with streptavidin,and applied for the development of chemiluminescence enzyme immunoassay (CLEIA).After comparing between MnPs- and MmPs-based CLEIA,MnPs-based CLEIA was proved to be a better method with less assay time,greater sensitivity,better linearity and longer chemiluminescence platform.MnPs-based CLEIA was applied for detection of sGPC3 in normal liver,hepatoeirrhosis,secondary liver cancer and HCC serum samples.The results indicated that sGPC3 was effective in diagnosis of HCC with high performance.

AIM　To study the effects of dexamethasone on expressing monocyte chemoattractant protein-1(MCP-1 ) mRNA in the rats with pulmonary fibrosis, elaborate the molecular mechanism of dexamethasone (Dxs) in pulmonary fibrosis therapy. METHODS　The model of pulmonary fibrosis was established by instilling bleomycin intratracheally. After treating with Dxsip, the levels of MCP-1 mRNA were determined by RT-PCR. The histological changes were observed and the numbers of inflammatory cells were counted in optical microscopy field. RESULTS　The accumulation of inflammatory cells decreased markedly, and the symptom of pulmonary fibrosis was alleviated. Furthermore, Dxs evidently inhibited the expression of MCP-1 mRNA in lung tissues with pulmonary fibrosis. CONCLUSION　The molecular mechanism of Dxs in pulmonary fibrosis therapy was associated with inhibiting the expression of MCP-1 mRNA.

Objective To provide the scientific evidence for studying Alzheimer's disease (AD) and decision-making for its management by analyzing the strategic information of hotspots in studies on AD.Methods Citation strategic coordinate diagram was plotted by describing the history of studies on AD with co-citation clustering for further understanding the novelty and concern of hotspots in studies on AD.The current hotspots in studies on AD were discovered by co-words clustering and their strategic coordinates were analyzed to reveal their development periods.Results The current hotspots in studies on AD were substance metabolism in AD patients, etiology of AD and therapies for AD.The diagnosis of AD according to its clinical characteristics and hypothesis on amyloid cascade in AD patients were greatly concerned.Conclusion Citation strategic coordinate analysis and co-words strategic coordinate analysis can display the hotspots in studies on AD and their development history.

Creatinine, uric acid, hypoxanthine and xanthine are important diagnostic biomarkers in human urine for gouty arthritis or renal disease diacrisis. A simple method for simultaneous determination of these biomarkers in urine based on reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) with ultraviolet (UV) detector was proposed. After pretreatment by dilution, centrifugation and filtration, the biomarkers in urine samples were separated by ODS-BP column by elution with methanol/50 mM NaH2PO4 buffer solution at pH 5.26 (5:95). Good linearity between peak areas and concentrations of standards was obtained for the biomarkers with correlation coefficients in the range of 0.9957-0.9993. The proposed analytical method has satisfactory repeatability (the recovery of data in a range of creatinine, uric acid, hypoxanthine and xanthine was 93.49-97.90%, 95.38-96.45%, 112.46-115.78%and 90.82-97.13%with standard deviation of o5%, respectively) and the limits of detection (LODs, S/N Z 3) for creatinine, uric acid, hypoxanthine, and xanthine were 0.010, 0.025, 0.050 and 0.025 mg/L, respectively. The established method was proved to be simple, accurate, sensitive and reliable for the quantitation of gouty arthritis' biomarkers in human urine samples. The ratio of creatinine to uric acid was found to be a possible factor for assessment of gouty arthritis.