This article reports 2 cross-leg free composite tissue flaps for repairing the severe composite tissue defects in lower leg without suitable adjacent recipient vasculature for microvascular anastomosis. The osseous myocutaneous flap of ilium and tensor fascia lata pedicled with ascending branch of lateral femoral circumflex vessels and the osseous muscle flap of scapula and latissimus dorsi pedicled with subscapular vessels were performed, respectively, to reconstruct the bone and soft-tissue defects in the lower leg of 2 patients. Both donor vessels were the posterior tibial artery and great saphenous vein from the contralateral lower leg. The legs and the bone flaps were immobilized by an external fixator. The periods of pedicle division were 43 and 67 days, respectively, after transplantation. Both flaps survived after pedicle division and the patients regained the ability to walk. There were no such complications as joint stiffness or donor site morbidity except for a linear scar. The 2 cross-leg free composite tissue flaps were optional methods for salvaging limbs that were otherwise nonreconstructable. But the indication for cross-leg free-tissue flap should be limited strictly.

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A new multiplex PCR-based reverse line-blot hybridization (mPCR/RLB) assay for rapid staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) typing The aim of this study was to develop a new discriminatory method for MRSA SCCmec typing based on multiplex PCR-based reverse line-blot hybridization (mPCR/RLB) assay to enable rapid identification and classification of MRSA SCCmec types in a clinical laboratory. Forty-five primer sets and 49 probes were designed and tested in uniplex PCR (uPCR) and mPCR/RLB. Probes were compared in silico to 14 whole-genome sequences and 18 partial SCCmec gene sequences of Staphylococcus aureus and complete genome and partial SCCmec genes of seven non-MRSA strains, including meticillin-susceptible S. aureus and meticillin-resistant coagulasenegative staphylococci. The method was tested on a set of 42 well-characterized reference MRSA strains. It identified all five epidemiologically relevant SCCmec types and 26 subtypes, including established and new subtypes of SCCmec III, IV (eight subtypes each) and V (three subtypes). The discriminatory power of mPCR/RLB SCCmec typing was similar to that of MLST and spa typing (Simpson indices of diversity of 0.916, 0.926 and 0.882, respectively; differences not statistically significant). The application of mPCR/RLB hybridization assay to MRSA SCCmec typing can improve the specificity, discriminatory power and throughput of the typing procedure. The detection of up to 43 mPCR products in a single hybridization assay transforms MRSA SCCmec typing from passive epidemiological library typing into a potential tool for near-real-time infection control surveillance and tracking of MRSA transmission in hospitals. INTRODUCTIONMorbidity and mortality from meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections and the emerging threat of community-associated MRSA highlight the importance of timely surveillance (Aires de Sousa & de Lencastre, 2004;Ma et al., 2002). Meticillin resistance is conferred by the mecA gene, which is carried on a mobile genetic element known as the staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) (Ito & Hiramatsu, 1998;Ito et al., 1999). The combination of mec complex class and cassette chromosome recombinase (ccr) genes determines the SCCmec type (Ito et al., 2004;Kondo et al., 2007). Currently, seven SCCmec types (I-VII) and a number of subtypes have been described, ranging in size from 20.9 to 66.9 kb (Ito et al., 2001(Ito et al., , 2004Daum et al., 2002;Oliveira et al., 2006a;Takano et al., 2008). SCCmec types I and IV-VII are usually resistant only to b-lactam antibiotics, while types II and III are often resistant to multiple classes of antibiotics due to additional resistance genes integrated into SCCmec (Deurenberg & Stobberingh, 2008 3These authors contributed equally to this work.

Low fluence, high repetition rate diode laser can efficiently remove unwanted hair but also significantly improve tolerability and reduce adverse events during the course of treatment.

Expressed sequence tags (ESTs) are widely used in gene survey research these years. The EST Pipeline System, software developed by Hangzhou Genomics Institute (HGI), can automatically analyze different scalar EST sequences by suitable methods. All the analysis reports, including those of vector masking, sequence assembly, gene annotation, Gene Ontology classification, and some other analyses, can be browsed and searched as well as downloaded in the Excel format from the web interface, saving research efforts from routine data processing for biological rules embedded in the data.