Vi antigen and microbial adhesion factors. The detection of adhesins in commercial Vi antigen preparations

Enterobacterial Vi-antigen inhibit the Escherichia coli-induced agglutination of red blood cells of guinea pigs and other animals, which indicates that Vi-antigen contains the admixture of adhesion associated with type I pili. The amount of adhesion contained in Vi-antigen can be determined from the degree to which its hemagglutination-inhibiting effect is manifested.     

伤寒Vi多糖菌苗多糖含量及分子大小测定试验

伤寒Ｖｉ多糖菌苗是我国新近研制成功的一种多糖菌苗。为了严格控制该制品的质量,经反复试验,建立了多糖含量和分子大小的测定方法。本文报导了（１）用火箭电泳法测定伤寒Ｖｉ多糖菌苗多糖含量。经对不同实验条件进行比较,选择出较为理想的条件。用该法测定８批样品。结果均符合规程要求。对其中５批样品进行６次重复试验表明,该法的重复性好,操作简单,是测定多糖含量较为理想的方法。（２）用琼脂糖柱层析法对２８批伤寒Ｖｉ多糖菌苗的分子大小进行测定。对用该法所得柱层析收集液分别用Ｈｅｓｔｒｉｎ法和２０６ｎｍ扫描法测定其多糖回收率,对测定结果进行比较。结果表明,两种方法的测定结果无显著性差异（Ｐ＞０．０１）,而且重复性均好。可根据实验室条件选择测定方法。     

Apolipoprotein E genotype and LRP1 polymorphisms in patients with different clinical types of metachromatic leukodystrophy

Metachromatic leukodystrophy (MLD) is a severe, neurodegenerative, metabolic disease which is caused by deficient activity of arylsulfatase A (ARSA). Sulfatides and other substrates of ARSA are stored in central and peripheral nervous systems, and in some other organs. Accumulated sulfatides are especially toxic to oligodendrocytes and Schwann cells leading to progressive demyelination. The kind of apolipoprotein E (apoE) isoform is of essential significance for the modulation of sulfatide quantity in the brain as apoE4 contains more sulfatides than apoE3. Taking into consideration the fact that apoE4 leads to the loss of sulfatides in CSF of Alzheimer's disease patients, we examined if apoE isoforms display any impact on clinical outcome in patients with different forms of MLD in whom sulfatides accumulate. The significant association of age at the onset of MLD symptoms with APOE ε2/ε3/ε4 and LRP1 c.766C>T polymorphisms was shown in multivariate stepwise regression analysis, in which other factors known to affect age at onset of the disease, i.e. clinical type of MLD, family connection of the patient and sex were also analyzed. As expected, the clinical type of MLD explained about 80% of the variance of the dependent variable. The impact of both polymorphisms on age of onset of the disease was considerably lower: 2.0% in the case of APOE polymorphism and 1.0% in the case of LRP1 polymorphism. Thus, the clinical outcome in MLD patients is related principally to the genotype of the ARSA gene, while the polymorphisms in the APOE and LRP1 genes are only slightly modifying factors.     

Partial amino acid sequences of botulinum neurotoxins types B and E

Clostridium botulinum type E neurotoxin, a single-chain protein of Mr 147,000, was purified and subjected to amino acid sequencing. The same was done for single-chain botulinum type B neurotoxin (Mr 152,000), and for the heavy and light chains (Mr 104,000 and 51,000 respectively) derived from type B by limited trypsin digestion. Twelve to eighteen residues were identified and the following conclusions were drawn: The light chain of the nicked (dichain) type B is derived from the N-terminal one-third of the single-chain (unnicked) parent neurotoxin; sequence homologies are present between single-chain types B and E and the light chain of the nicked type A [J. J. Schmidt, V. Sathyamoorthy, and B. R. DasGupta (1984) Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun. 119, 900-904]; the N-terminal regions of the heavy chains of types A and B have some structural similarity; and activation of type B neurotoxin cannot involve removal of amino acids or peptides from the N terminus.