The aim of the present study is to test a hypothesis that 5-HT1A and 5-HT2C receptors in the amygdala play an important role in the regulation of anxiety behaviors. We examined alterations in anxiety-like behaviors after manipulation of the expression of 5-HT1A and 5-HT2C receptors in the amygdala using recombinant adenovirus approaches. Recombinant adenoviruses containing a 5-HT1A promoter-controlled 5-HT1A antisense sequence or a 5-HT2C promoter-controlled 5-HT2C sense sequence were injected into the amygdala. Elevated plus-maze (EPM) and open field tests were conducted to determine anxiety-like behavior and locomotor activity. Reductions in the expression of 5-HT1A receptors in the amygdala significantly attenuated the time spent in the open arms of EPM and time spent in the center of an open field. Reduction in the percent of time spent in the open arms of EPM is negatively correlated with the density of 5-HT1A receptors in the central amygdala. On the other hand, increased expression of 5-HT2C receptors reduced the time spent in the open arms of EPM and time spent in the center of an open field. The reductions in the time spent and distance traveled in the open arms of EPM were correlated to the density of 5-HT2C receptors in the basolateral nucleus of amygdala. These data suggest that amygdaloid 5-HT1A receptors produce anxiolytic and 5-HT2C receptors produce anxiogenic effects. Together, the present results demonstrate the important role of the amygdaloid 5-HT1A and 5-HT2C receptors in the regulation of anxiety-like behaviors. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled 'Anxiety and Depression'. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

In this paper, we present a new microfluidic immunoassay platform, which is based on the synergistic combination of the yeast surface display (YSD) technique and the microfluidic technology. Utilizing the YSD technique, antigens specific to the target antibody are displayed on the surface of engineered yeast cells with intracellular fluorescent proteins. The displayed antigens are then used for the detection of the target antibody, with the yeast cells as fluorescent labels. Multiplex immunoassay can be readily realized by using yeast cells expressing different intracellular fluorescent proteins to display different antigens. The implementation of this YSD-based immunoassay on the microfluidic platform eliminates the need for the bulky, complex and expensive flow cytometer. To improve the detection sensitivity and to eliminate the need for pumping, a functionalized micro pillar array (MPA) is incorporated in the microfluidic chip, resulting in a detection limit of 5 ng/mL (or 1 ng in terms of amount) and enhanced compatibility with practical applications such as clinical biopsy. This new platform has a high potential to be integrated into microfluidic detection systems to enable portable diagnostics in the future. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

For any analytic quasiperiodically forced circle diffeomorphisms (omega, < p/q, omega > + epsilon f), where f is fixed and epsilon is small, we show that if w is Diophantine and the fibred rotation number of the diffeomorphism remains constant in a unilateral neighborhood of epsilon = 0 (i.e., there is a unilateral phase-locking at epsilon = 0), then the diffeomorphism has at least one analytic q-invariant torus, provided epsilon is small enough. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.