Supporters and survivors: the people without AIDS.

Over the past 10 years the AIDS crisis has produced a large volume of writing. Much of this is documentary. Dozens of studies of AIDS from various clinical and political perspectives have been complemented by just as many published diaries, autobiographies, novels, plays, and poems. A few of these works have risen to the surface not only as extraordinarily valuable testimonies to the changes AIDS has wrought in individual and collective life but also as first-rate literary works, worth reading because beyond their immediate purposes they articulate with extraordinary lucidity and compassion some deep truths about the human--and the modern--condition. Paul Monette's Borrowed Time is among the most distinctive of those. It speaks not only for the community of people with AIDS and those who support them but for a generation.     

SSU1 encodes a plasma membrane protein with a central role in a network of proteins conferring sulfite tolerance in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

The Saccharomyces cerevisiae SSU1 gene was isolated based on its ability to complement a mutation causing sensitivity to sulfite, a methionine intermediate. SSU1 encodes a deduced protein of 458 amino acids containing 9 or 10 membrane-spanning domains but has no significant similarity to other proteins in public databases. An Ssu1p-GEP fusion protein was localized to the plasma membrane. Multicopy suppression analysis, undertaken to explore relationships among genes previously implicated in sulfite metabolism, suggests a regulatory pathway in which SSU1 acts downstream of FZF1 and SSU3, which in turn act downstream of GRR1.     

Frequency of cytokine-producing CD4-CD8- peripheral blood mononuclear cells in patients with Plasmodium falciparum malaria.

The frequency of cytokine-producing CD4-/CD8- mononuclear cells was assessed in patients of different age groups (29 infants, aged 1-5 years; 30 schoolchildren, aged 6-14 years, 26 adults, aged > 15 years) with acute Plasmodium falciparum malaria, from Gabon. Fifteen patients were followed up before antimalarial treatment (day 0), during parasite clearance (day 3) and after resolution of parasitemia (day 10). By using flow cytometry for intracellular detection of cytokines, a striking expansion of CD4-/CD8- cells producing the type 1 cytokines interleukin (IL)-2-/interferon (IFN)-gamma+, IL-2+/IFN-gamma+ and IL-2+/IFN-gamma- was observed in adults as compared with children. Type 2 cytokine expression (IL-4+/IFN-gamma-, IL-13+/IFN-gamma-) and type 0 cells (IL-4+/IFN-gamma+, IL-13+/IFN-gamma+) were not significantly different between the three age groups. Patients with severe malaria had a significantly increased frequency of type 2 cytokine-producing CD4-/CD8- cells. Drug-induced clearance of parasitemia was characterized by a decrease of IL-2+/IFN-gamma- and type 2 cytokine expressing CD4-/CD8- cells and by a gradual increase of IL-10+/IFN-gamma- expression. The type 1/type 2 dichotomy observed within the CD4-/CD8- cell population is likely to be of significance in the host response against P. falciparum malaria.     

Sequence analysis of a 101-kilobase plasmid required for agar degradation by a Microscilla isolate.

An agar-degrading marine bacterium identified as a Microscilla species was isolated from coastal California marine sediment. This organism harbored a single 101-kb circular DNA plasmid designated pSD15. The complete nucleotide sequence of pSD15 was obtained, and sequence analysis indicated a number of genes putatively encoding a variety of enzymes involved in polysaccharide utilization. The most striking feature was the occurrence of five putative agarase genes. Loss of the plasmid, which occurred at a surprisingly high frequency, was associated with loss of agarase activity, supporting the sequence analysis results.