Increased expression of costimulatory markers CD134 and CD80 on interleukin-17 producing T cells in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus

Introduction  

There is growing evidence that interleukin 17 (IL-17) producing T cells are involved in the pathogenesis of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Previous studies showed that increased percentages of T-cell subsets expressing the costimulatory molecules CD80 and CD134 are associated with disease activity and renal involvement in SLE. The aim of this study was to investigate the distribution and phenotypical characteristics of IL-17 producing T-cells in SLE, in particular in patients with lupus nephritis, with emphasis on the expression of CD80 and CD134.     

Epipona media cooper (Hymenoptera: Vespidae), a social wasp new to the Brazilian Atlantic Forest

An occupied nest of Epipona media Cooper was discovered and collected in a cabruca (cocoa plantation with native tree cover). This is the first record of E. media from Bahia State. We described the nest structure and compared the adults with the closely related species Epipona tatua Cuvier.     

The sample processing time interval as an influential factor in flow cytometry analysis of lymphocyte subsets

The objective of this paper is to propose a protocol to analyze blood samples in yellow fever 17DD vaccinated which developed serious adverse events. We investigated whether or not the time between sample collection and sample processing could interfere in lymphocyte subset percentage, for it is often impossible to analyze blood samples immediately after collection due to transport delay from collection places to the flow cytometry facility. CD4+CD38+ T, CD8+CD38+ T, CD3+ T, CD19+ B lymphocyte subsets were analyzed by flow cytometry in nine healthy volunteers immediately after blood collection and after intervals of 24 and 48 h. The whole blood lysis method and gradient sedimentation by Histopaque were applied to isolate peripheral blood mononuclear cells for flow cytometry analyses. With the lysis method, there was no significant change in lymphocyte subset percentage between the two time intervals (24 and 48 h). In contrast, when blood samples were processed by Histopaque gradient sedimentation, time intervals for sample processing influenced the percentage in T lymphocyte subsets but not in B cells. From the results obtained, we could conclude that the whole blood lysis method is more appropriate than gradient sedimentation by Histopaque for immunophenotyping of blood samples collected after serious adverse events, due to less variation in the lymphocyte subset levels with respect to the time factor.     

Absence of Classical Heat Shock Response in the Citrus Pathogen <Emphasis Type="Italic">Xylella fastidiosa</Emphasis>

The fastidious bacterium Xylella fastidiosa is associated with important crop diseases worldwide. We have recently shown that X. fastidiosa is a peculiar organism having unusually low values of gene codon bias throughout its genome and, unexpectedly, in the group of the most abundant proteins. Here, we hypothesized that the lack of codon usage optimization in X. fastidiosa would incapacitate this organism to undergo quick and massive changes in protein expression as occurs in a classical stress response. Proteomic analysis of the response to heat stress in X. fastidiosa revealed that no changes in protein expression can be detected. Moreover, stress-inducible proteins identified in the closely related citrus pathogen Xanthomonas axonopodis pv citri were found to be constitutively expressed in X. fastidiosa. These proteins have extremely high codon bias values in the X. citri and other well-studied organisms, but low values in X. fastidiosa. Because biased codon usage is well known to correlate to the rate of protein synthesis, we speculate that the peculiar codon bias distribution in X. fastidiosa is related to the absence of a classical stress response, and, probably, alternative strategies for survival of X. fastidiosa under stressfull conditions.     

Influence of diets supplemented with vitamins C and E on pirarucu (Arapaima gigas) blood parameters

This study evaluated the influence of diets supplemented with 500, 800, 1200 mg kg^− 1 of vitamin C (ascorbic acid or AA) and vitamin E (α-tocopherol or α-T) on the physiological responses of pirarucu fed for 2 months. Weight and mortality were not affected by dietary vitamin type or their concentrations. Significant increase (p < 0.05) on the red blood cells count was obtained on treatments with 800 and 1200 mg AA kg^− 1 and on the hemoglobin concentration on treatment with 500 mg α-T kg^− 1 relatively to control. Mean corpuscular volume presented a significant decrease (p < 0.05) on treatment with 800 and 1200 mg AA kg⁻¹ when compared to control. Mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration was significantly high (p < 0.05) on treatment with 500 mg α-T kg^− 1. Only in vitamin C treatments, we noticed a significant increase (p < 0.05) in the number of leucocytes relative to control. All fish in the vitamin-supplemented treatments, except 500 mg AA kg^− 1, had high total protein values compared to control. Fish treated with 800 or 1200 mg α-T kg^− 1 also showed increases in plasma glucose concentrations. Our results suggest that 800 and 1200 mg AA kg^− 1 are probably the most suitable concentrations for pirarucu diets, although high vitamin E diets are not necessary for quantitative leucocyte increases for this species.     

The use of ASB-14 in combination with CHAPS is the best for solubilization of human brain proteins for two-dimensional gel electrophoresis.

Protein extraction is the most important step to reveal a proteome by Two-Dimensional Gel Electrophoresis. Usually, the urea/thiourea based standard protein extraction buffer (SB) is combined with detergents with the aim of achieving better resolution and solubilization of different classes of proteins. In order to produce better gels and achieve the greatest spot resolution of Human Brain Proteins, comparisons using 2-DE of extracted proteins from Human Brain Frontal Cortex with SB constituents (7M Urea, 2M Thiourea and 100mM DTT) were made, using different detergent compositions in the buffer. SB preparations in combination with CHAPS and ASB-14 as well as with ASB-16 (reported for the first time in 2-DE experiments) have been tested. Our results confirm that the most efficient solubilizing solution for 2-DE analysis of cytosolic and membrane Human Brain Proteins is SB combined with 4% CHAPS and 2% ASB-14.     

Improving cluster-based missing value estimation of DNA microarray data

We present a modification of the weighted K-nearest neighbours imputation method (KNNimpute) for missing values (MVs) estimation in microarray data based on the reuse of estimated data. The method was called iterative KNN imputation (IKNNimpute) as the estimation is performed iteratively using the recently estimated values. The estimation efficiency of IKNNimpute was assessed under different conditions (data type, fraction and structure of missing data) by the normalized root mean squared error (NRMSE) and the correlation coefficients between estimated and true values, and compared with that of other cluster-based estimation methods (KNNimpute and sequential KNN). We further investigated the influence of imputation on the detection of differentially expressed genes using SAM by examining the differentially expressed genes that are lost after MV estimation. The performance measures give consistent results, indicating that the iterative procedure of IKNNimpute can enhance the prediction ability of cluster-based methods in the presence of high missing rates, in non-time series experiments and in data sets comprising both time series and non-time series data, because the information of the genes having MVs is used more efficiently and the iterative procedure allows refining the MV estimates. More importantly, IKNN has a smaller detrimental effect on the detection of differentially expressed genes.