The bacterial canker of kiwifruit by Pseudomonas syringae pv. actinidiae is an emblematic example of a catastrophic disease of fruit crops. In 2008 a new, extremely virulent form of the pathogen emerged and rapidly devastated many Actinidia spp. orchards all over the world. In order to understand differences in populations within this pathovar and to elucidate their diffusion and movements on world scale, it is necessary to be able to quickly and on a routine basis compare new isolates with previous records. In this report a worldwide collection of 142 strains was analyzed by MLVA, chosen as investigative technique for its efficacy, reproducibility, simplicity and low cost. A panel of 13 Variable Number of Tandem Repeats (VNTR) loci was identified and used to describe the pathogen population. The MLVA clustering is highly congruent with the population structure as previously established by other molecular approaches including whole genome sequencing and correlates with geographic origin, time of isolation and virulence. For convenience, we divided the VNTR loci in two panels. Panel 1 assay, using six loci, recognizes 23 different haplotypes, clustered into ten complexes with highest congruence with previous classifications. Panel 2, with seven VNTR loci, provides discriminatory power. Using the total set of 13 VNTR loci, 58 haplotypes can be distinguished. The recent hypervirulent type shows very limited diversity and includes, beside the strains from Europe, New Zealand and Chile, a few strains from Shaanxi, China. A broad genetic variability is observed in China, but different types are also retrievable in Japan and Korea. The low virulent strains cluster together and are very different from the other MLVA genotypes. Data were used to generate a public database in MLVAbank. MLVA represents a very promising first-line assay for large-scale routine genotyping, prior to whole genome sequencing of only the most relevant samples. 相似文献
We studied methods for the automatic segmentation of neonatal and developing brain images into 50 anatomical regions, utilizing a new set of manually segmented magnetic resonance (MR) images from 5 term-born and 15 preterm infants imaged at term corrected age called ALBERTs. Two methods were compared: individual registrations with label propagation and fusion; and template based registration with propagation of a maximum probability neonatal ALBERT (MPNA). In both cases we evaluated the performance of different neonatal atlases and MPNA, and the approaches were compared with the manual segmentations by means of the Dice overlap coefficient. Dice values, averaged across regions, were 0.81±0.02 using label propagation and fusion for the preterm population, and 0.81±0.02 using the single registration of a MPNA for the term population. Segmentations of 36 further unsegmented target images of developing brains yielded visibly high-quality results. This registration approach allows the rapid construction of automatically labeled age-specific brain atlases for neonates and the developing brain. 相似文献
Summary An attempt to repeat studies performed by Baldaccini et al. (1975b) in which pigeons exhibited predictably deviated mean vanishing bearings after prolonged exposure to deflected wind flow is reported. In four sets of pooled release data, deflections in mean bearings as predicted by the olfactory hypothesis of pigeon homing were observed. It is concluded that the time spent in such deflected-wind environments significantly alters some component of the birds' initial orientation mechanism.The authors wish to thank Howard French and Clarence Tilton for their help in construction details and André Gobert for his contributions and assistance. Our appreciation is also extended to Douglas McCorkle, Irene Brown, Michael Weiler, Sean Tunis, Angela Lui, Daniel Polikoff, and Scott Smith for their assistance in conducting test releases and in timing-in returning birds. The participation of the Italian authors was supported jointly by the Italian Ministry of Public Education and the Cassa di Risparmio di Pisa. Additional support for this study came from a National Science Foundation Grant No. BMS 75-18905 A02 to William T. Keeton. 相似文献
Immune-based treatments represent a promising new class of therapy designed to boost the immune system to specifically eradicate malignant cells. Immunotherapy may generate specific anti-tumor immune responses, and dendritic cells (DC), professional antigen-presenting cells, are widely used in experimental cancer immunotherapy. Several reports describe methods for the generation of mature, antigen-pulsed DC for clinical use. Improved quality and standardization are desirable to obtain GMP-compliant protocols. In this study we describe the generation of DC from 31 Glioblastoma (GB) patients starting from their monocytes isolated by immunomagnetic CD14 selection using the CliniMACS® device. Upon differentiation of CD14+ with IL-4 and GM-CSF, DC were induced to maturation with TNF-α, PGE2, IL-1β, and IL-6. Whole tumor lysate was obtained, for the first time, in a closed system using the semi-automated dissociator GentleMACS®. The yield of proteins improved by 130% compared to the manual dissociation method. Interestingly the Mean Fluorescence Intensity for CD83 increased significantly in DC pulsed with “new method” lysate compared to DC pulsed with “classical method” lysate. Our results indicate that immunomagnetic isolation of CD14+ monocytes using the CliniMACS® device and their pulsing with whole tumor lysate proteins is a suitable method for clinical-scale generation of high quality, functional DC under GMP-grade conditions. 相似文献
Lipase inhibitors have generated a great interest because they could help in the prevention or the therapy of lipase-related diseases. Therefore, the aim of the work was to evaluate by HPLC, and using Candida rugosa lipase as model, the inhibitory effect of several saponins: β-aescin, digitonin, glycyrrhizic acid (GA) and Quillaja saponin (QS); flavonoids: 3-hydroxyflavone, 5-hydroxyflavone, (±)-catechin and kaempferol; and alkaloids: aspidospermine, papaverine, physostigmine, pilocarpine, raubasine, rescinnamine, reserpine and trigonelline.
The inhibition produced by most of these compounds is described here for the first time. Saponins appeared very active, being β-aescin and digitonin the most active compounds (IC50 = 0.8–2.4 × 10−5 M). The inhibitory activity of flavonoids was lower than that of saponins (except GA), and (±)-catechin and kaempferol were the most active. Alkaloids was the most heterogeneous group assayed, varying from rescinnamine, with an IC16 similar to that of digitonin, to papaverine and others which showed almost no inhibition.
In conclusion, β-aescin, digitonin, kaempferol or (±)-catechin, strong lipase inhibitors with a low toxicity and present herbal drugs used for lipase-related diseases such as acne or ulcer, are promising candidates for the prevention or the treatment of these diseases. 相似文献