Good separation of bacterial cell wall amino acids, including the isomers of diaminopimelic acid, was obtained by two-dimensional thin-layer chromatography, using commercial cellulose-coated aluminum sheets with isopropanol-acetic acid-water (75: 10: 15, vol/vol) and methanol-pyridine-10 N hydrochloric acid-water (64:8:2: 14, vol/vol) as the fist and second solvents, respectively. Cell wall analysis is an established chemotaxonomic method in bacterial systematics. The analyses can be made at various levels of technological sophistication, depending upon the choice, skill, and resources of the operator. Most systematic work still relies upon paper chroma

A 54-year-old ranch hand presented to the emergency room with an alleged spider bite and multiple abscesses. Both wound and blood cultures grew Photorhabdus asymbiotica, an enteric gram-negative rod that was initially misidentified by the hospital's rapid identification system. Clinical laboratories should be aware of the limitations of their rapid identification systems and always use them as an adjunct to analysis of morphological and phenotypic traits.A 54-year-old male presented to the emergency department of a local Houston hospital during July 2003. He was a ranch hand who believed that he was bitten by a spider on his left breast. He presented with multiple carbuncles on his left chest wall and multiple pustular nodular lesions over his extremities. The patient, who has a family history of diabetes, had a blood sugar level of 400 on admission. His temperature was 101°F, his blood pressure was 135/70, his respiratory rate was 20, and his pulse was 60. Culture of the left-breast abscess showed moderate numbers of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and an unremarkable gram-negative rod identified by a MicroScan Neg Urine Combo Panel Type 34 on the MicroScan WalkAway (Dade Behring, Inc

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Summary The ability of tumour extracts to augment E‐rosette formation by cancer patients’ lymphocytes was demonstrated for colorectal carcinoma, breast carcinoma and melanoma. Positive augmentation reactions were obtained with 14 of 20 patients tested with extracts related to their own tumour types. Some lack of specificity was suggested by 5 positive reactions in the same patients tested with unrelated extracts. No false positives were found in normal subjects. The technique is simple, rapid and appears to depend on tumour‐associated antigens in the extracts. Simultaneous leucocyte adherence inhibition tests on split samples of blood had a high degree of sensitivity and specificity, confirming the potential reactivity of the leucocytes and extracts used.