The microheterogeneity profile of human serum transferrin from normal and alcoholic subjects was investigated qualitatively and quantitatively by means of Concanavalin A crossed affinity immunoelectrophoresis and an image analysis program. Differences in amounts of nonreacting transferrin molecules were found, suggesting an increase in triantennary glycosylation of transferrin from alcoholics compared with normal individuals. The increased amount of a highly retarded fraction in crude sera from alcoholics was demonstrated to be artefactual, probably due to entrapment or coprecipitation as the fraction disappeared after repeating the analysis with immunosorbent-purified transferrin. In conclusion, affinity electrophoresis represents a simple approach for demonstration of variations in the neutral monosaccharides of glycans and can discriminate between transferrin from alcoholics and normal individuals.
A method is presented which makes it possible to present crossed immunoelectrophoretic patterns to an artificial neural network. The electrophoretic patterns are presented for the artificial neural network as three-dimensional vectors and it is shown that it is possible with this representation to train the network to learn the patterns and classify them. It was found that the ability to generalize was substantially increased by the addition of noise to the input patterns during training. Furthermore, the addition of noise decreased the number of presentations needed to reach the predetermined error level. The trained neural network was able to classify all distorted patterns correctly within an error range of 1%.
An automatic method is described which can measure areas consumed from leaf discs by insects. The method is based on digital image processing and is able to compensate for changes in areas which occur during the feeding experiments after the leaf discs have been cut. Calibration with previous methods involving visual counting has been made. The new method proved to be very time-saving and sufficiently accurate for many purposes. The new and the previous method were compared in a study of the relative acceptability of horseradish (Armoracia rusticana G., M. & Sch.), radish (Raphanus sativus L.) and pea (Pisum sativum L.) to two crucifer feeding flea beetle species, Phyllotreta armoraciae (Koch) and P. nemorum L. (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae: Alticinae). Pea leaf discs were treated with sinigfin, a known feeding stimulant for both species. Choice as well as non-choice tests yielded the same results independant of the method used for estimation of consumed areas. Both species preferred to feed on their host plants in choice tests, P. armoraciae on horseradish and P. nemorum on radish. Relative amounts consumed from non-host plants were higher in non-choice than in choice tests. Inexperienced P. armoraciae consumed similar amounts of horseradish and pea treated with sinigrin in the non-choice tests.
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