An antifungal protein, with a molecular mass of 41.9
kDa, and designated as bacisubin, was isolated from a culture of
Bacillus subtilis strain B-916. The isolation procedure consisted of ion exchange ...chromatography on DEAE-Sepharose Fast Flow, and fast protein liquid chromatography on Phenyl Sepharose 6 Fast Flow and hydroxyapatite columns. The protein was adsorbed on all three chromatographic media. Bacisubin exhibited inhibitory activity on mycelial growth in
Magnaporthe grisease,
Sclerotinia sclerotiorum,
Rhizoctonia solani,
Alternaria oleracea,
A. brassicae and
Botrytis cinerea. The IC
50 values of its antifungal activity toward the last four fungal species were 4.01
μM, 0.087
μM, 0.055
μM and 2.74
μM, respectively. Bacisubin demonstrated neither protease activity, nor protease inhibitory activity. However, it manifested ribonuclease and hemagglutinating activities.
The nonimmunologic loss of islets in the pre‐, peri‐, and early post‐islet transplant periods is profound. To determine the potential role that transplantation of only a marginal mass of functioning ...beta cells may play in triggering late nonimmunologic graft loss, we studied the effect of treatment with alpha‐1‐antitrypsin (AAT) in the autologous cynomolgus islet transplant model. A marginal mass of autologous islets, that is islets prepared from 70% to 80% of the pancreas, was transplanted at 1600–4100 IEQ/kg into subtotal pancreatectomized, streptozotocin‐treated and insulin‐deficient diabetic hosts. In this marginal mass islet transplant model, islet function is insidiously lost over time and diabetes recurs in all untreated monkeys by 180 days posttransplantation. Short‐term treatment with AAT, an acute phase reactant, in the peri‐transplant period serves to terminate inflammation through effects upon expression of TGFβ, NFκB and AKT and favorably altering expression of cell death and survival pathways, as detected by a system biology approach and histology. These effects enabled functional expansion of the islet mass in transplanted hosts such that graft function improves rather than deteriorating over time.
Short‐term treatment with alpha‐1‐antitrypsin in the peritransplant period prevents the otherwise inevitable failure of autologous islet cynomolgus transplants and enables indefinite survival in association with profound antiinflammatory, cytoprotective effects.
Lineage (CD3e, CD11b, GR1, B220 and Ly‐76) negative hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and hematopoietic progenitor cells (HPCs) infiltrate islet allografts within 24 h posttransplantation. In fact, ...lineagenegative Sca‐1+cKit+ (“LSK”) cells, a classic signature for HSCs, were also detected among these graft infiltrating cells. Lineage negative graft infiltrating cells are functionally multi‐potential as determined by a standard competitive bone marrow transplant (BMT) assay. By 3 months post‐BMT, both CD45.1 congenic, lineage negative HSCs/HPCs and classic “LSK” HSCs purified from islet allograft infiltrating cells, differentiate and repopulate multiple mature blood cell phenotypes in peripheral blood, lymph nodes, spleen, bone marrow and thymus of CD45.2 hosts. Interestingly, “LSK” HSCs also rapidly infiltrate syngeneic islet transplants as well as allogeneic cardiac transplants and sham surgery sites. It seems likely that an inflammatory response, not an adaptive immune response to allo‐antigen, is responsible for the rapid infiltration of islet and cardiac transplants by biologically active HSCs/HPCs. The pattern of hematopoietic differentiation obtained from graft infiltrating HSCs/HPCs, cells that are recovered from inflammatory sites, as noted in the competitive BMT assay, is not precisely the same as that of intramedullary HSCs. This does not refute the obvious multi‐lineage potential of graft infiltrating HSCs/HPCs.
Multi‐potential hematopoietic stem cells rapidly infiltrate allogeneic and syngeneic transplants and sham surgery sites, representing an inflammatory rather than an adaptive immune response to allo‐antigen.
A non-specific lipid transfer peptide (nsLTP) with antimicrobial activity was isolated from the mung bean (
Phaseolus mungo) seeds. The procedure entailed aqueous extraction, ion exchange ...chromatography on CM-Sephadex and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) on POROS-HS-20. The peptide exhibited a molecular mass of 9.03
kDa in mass spectrometry. It exerted antifungal action toward
Fusarium solani,
Fusarium oxysporum,
Pythium aphanidermatum and
Sclerotium rolfsii, and antibacterial action against
Staphylococcus aureus but not against
Salmonella typhimurium. The lipid binding of this peptide was very similar to that of a previously described lipid transfer protein extracted from wheat seeds and maize seeds, indicating that it possessed lipid transfer activity. The present findings add to the scarcity of the literature on leguminous nsLTPs.
The performance and predictive capability of support vector machine (SVM) and radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) for classification problems in QSAR/QSPR were investigated and compared with ...several other classification methods such as linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and nonlinear discriminate analysis (NLDA). In the present study, two different data sets are evaluated. The first one involves the classification of four action modes of 221 phenols and the second investigation deals with the classification of the three narcosis mechanism of aquatic toxicity for 194 organic compounds. In both cases, the predictive ability of the SVM model is comparable or superior to those obtained by LDA, NLDA and RBFNN. The obtained results indicate that the SVM model with the RBF kernel function can be used as an alternative tool for classification problems in QSAR/QSPR.
The 3D QSAR analyses of antimalarial alkoxylated and hydroxylated chalcones were first conducted by Comparative molecular field analysis (CoMFA) and Comparative similarity indices analysis (CoMSIA) ...to determine the factors required for the activity of these compounds. Satisfactory results were obtained after performing a leave-one-out (LOO) cross-validation study with cross-validation
q
2 and conventional
r
2 values of 0.740 and 0.972 by the CoMFA model, 0.714 and 0.976 by the CoMSIA model, respectively. The results provided the tools for predicting the affinity of related compounds, and for guiding the design and synthesis of novel and more potent antimalarial agents.
As there appeared to be no data available on Toxocara canis infection in the children of Swaziland, a serological survey of T. canis infection was recently conducted among 92 children aged 3-12 years ...from rural slums in the low- and middle-veld. A child was considered seropositive if, in western blots based on the excretory-secretory antigens of larval T. canis, his or her serum gave a positive result when diluted 1 : 64.
Forty-one (44.6%) of the children were found seropositive. There were no statistically significant differences in seroprevalence between the 49 boys and 43 girls investigated (46.9% v. 41.8%) or between the eight subjects aged 12 years and the 47 aged ≤5 years (62.5% v. 38.3%); the corresponding odds ratios were 0.81 (95% confidence interval=0.36-1.86; P=0.62) and 2.69 (95% confidence interval=0.57-12.62; P=0.20), respectively. The 66 subjects from the middleveld were, however, significantly more likely to be seropositive than the 26 subjects from the lowveld (54.5% v. 19.2%; odds ratio=5.04, with a 95% confidence interval of 1.70-14.98; P<0.01).
It seems likely that T. canis infection is common among the children who live in slums in Swaziland, particularly in the country's middleveld, probably as the result of poor hygiene and poor sanitation.
Chronic cough may be a result of asthma and nonasthma causes, but it is unclear whether there are specific inflammatory or remodeling changes.
We determined airway mucosal changes in patients ...presenting with asthmatic cough and cough associated with nonasthmatic causes.
Patients with chronic cough of nonasthmatic (n
=
33; postnasal drip/rhinitis in 6, gastroesophageal reflux in 5, bronchiectasis in 3, and idiopathic in 19) and asthmatic (n
=
14) causes and 15 healthy controls underwent fiberoptic bronchoscopy. Morphometry of bronchial biopsies and capsaicin cough sensitivity were assessed.
Compared with controls, submucosal eosinophils and neutrophils were increased in patients with asthmatic cough (
P < .005) and submucosal mast cells in patients with nonasthmatic cough (
P
=
.01). Subbasement membrane thickness, goblet cell area, vascularity, and vessel size were also increased in both groups. Smooth muscle area was higher only in patients with nonasthmatic cough (
P
=
.0007 vs control and
P
=
.019 vs asthmatic cough). None of the pathologic changes were related to the duration of coughing. Cough sensitivity was heightened in patients with nonasthmatic cough compared with controls and patients with asthmatic cough. The degree of goblet cell hyperplasia and epithelial shedding positively correlated with cough sensitivity in patients with nonasthmatic cough (
r
=
0.43;
P
=
.01; and
r
=
0.40;
P
=
.02, respectively).
Features of airway wall remodeling are prominent in the airways with nonasthmatic as well as asthmatic cough. These are linked to chronic cough rather than to asthma. Mast cell hyperplasia rather than eosinophilia is distinctive for nonasthmatic cough.
The magnetization reversal process within the first two iron layers at the Fe/GaAs(001) interface is found to be different and independent from the Fe thin film bulk as measured by magnetic ...second-harmonic generation and magneto-optical Kerr effect. The interface magnetization is largely noncollinear from the bulk with an abrupt magnetic boundary and an anisotropic exchange coupling stiffness, weak interlayer coupling but relatively strong intralayer stiffness. In contrast, Fe/GaAs(110) exhibits a rigid coupling between interface and bulk magnetization suggesting that the interfacial bonding structure can dramatically change the nature of the exchange coupling. Moreover, the uniaxial magnetic anisotropy in Fe/GaAs(001) extends from the interface to the first 5 nm in the Fe film and is induced by stress. These results are also relevant to other magnetic/nonmagnetic interfaces with abrupt chemical bond structures.
Killer cell immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIRs), expressed in both natural killer (NK) cells and a subset of T cells, represent a family of both inhibitory and activating receptors that can regulate ...NK and T cells upon interacting with human leucocyte antigen (HLA) class I molecules on target cells. The number and distribution of KIR genes vary between individuals and populations from different geographical regions and ethnic origins. In this study, we investigated KIR gene frequencies and genotype diversities of 13 KIR genes, 2 pseudogenes, expressed and non-expressed forms of KIR2DL5 and the two subtypes, full-length and deleted forms, of KIR2DS4 in 100 unrelated healthy individuals of the Bai population, living in the Dali Bai autonomous prefecture in the Yunnan province. All individuals were typed positive for the three framework loci KIR3DL3, 2DL4 and 3DL2, as well as for three non-framework genes KIR2DL1, 2DL3 and the pseudogene KIR2DP1. The gene frequencies of the other KIR genes ranged from 7%-95%. The results of tested linkage disequilibrium (LD) among KIR genes demonstrated that they display a wide range of LD. χ2 analysis among non-ubiquitous genes, using the KIR gene frequency data from our study population, as well as from previously published population data, was conducted and revealed significant differences in the KIR2DL1, 2DL2, 3DL1 and KIR2DS1 genes. The results of the present study can be valuable for enriching the Chinese ethnical gene information resources of the KIR gene pool, for anthropological studies, as well as for KIR-related disease research.
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