Conceptual Method of Temperature Sensation in Bionic Hand by Extraordinary Perceptual Phenomenon

Lack of temperature sensation of myoelectric prosthetic hand limits the daily activities of amputees.To this end,a non-invasive temperature sensation method is proposed to train amputees to sense temperature with psychophysical sensory substitution.In this study,22 healthy participants took part besides 5 amputee participants.The duration time of the study was 31 days with five test steps according to the Leitner technique.An adjustable temperature mug and a Peltier were used to change the temperature of the water/phantom digits to induce temperature to participants.Also,to isolate the surround-ings and show colors,a Virtual Reality(VR)glass was employed.The statistical results conducted are based on the response of participants with questionnaire method.Using Chi-square tests,it is concluded that participants answer the experiment significantly correctly using the Leitner technique(P value＜0.05).Also,by applying the"Repeated Measures ANOVA",it is noticed that the time of numbness felt by participants had significant(P value＜0.001)difference.Participants could remember lowest and highest temperatures significantly better than other temperatures(P value＜0.001);furthermore,the well-trained amputee participant practically using the prosthesis with 72.58％could identify object's temperature with only once time experimenting the color temperature.     

An additional ionic bond suggested by molecular modelling of TEM-2 might induce a slight discrepancy between catalytic properties of TEM-1 and TEM-2 β-lactamases

Abstract The plasmid-mediated TEM-1 and TEM-2 β-lactamases are the most commonly encountered among Gram-negative bacteria. They belong to molecular class A, and differ by one amino acid at position 39: TEM-1 have a glutamine and TEM-2 a lysine. Kinetic parameters ( k _cat and K _m) and catalytic efficiency ( k _cat/ K _m) of TEM-1 and TEM-2 β-lactamases are slightly, but significantly different. For all antibiotics except methicillin and cefazolin, the catalytic efficiency values of TEM-2 are clearly greater than that of TEM-1. Molecular modelling of TEM-2, when compared to that of TEM-1, showed an additional ionic bond between Lys-39 and Glu-281.     

Identification of COS markers in the Pinaceae

Conserved ortholog set (COS) markers are evolutionary conserved, single-copy genes, identified from large databases of express sequence tags (ESTs). They are of particular use for constructing syntenic genetic maps among species. In this study, we identified a set of 1,813 putative single-copy COS markers between spruce and loblolly pine, then designed primers for 931 of these markers and tested these primers with DNA from spruce, pine, and Douglas fir. Of these 931 primers, 56% (524) amplified a product in both spruce and pine, and 71% (373) of these were single-banded; 224 amplicons were single-banded in all three species. Even though these COS markers were selected from large EST databases, a substantial proportion (20–30%) of amplicons displayed multiple bands or smears, suggesting significant paralogy. Sequencing of three single-banded amplicons showed high nucleotide similarities among 29 conifer species, suggesting orthology of single-banded amplicons. Screening for COS marker polymorphism in two pedigrees of white spruce and two pedigrees of loblolly pine revealed an average informativeness of 36% for spruce and 24% for pine (e.g., at least one parent was heterozygous for a single-nucleotide polymorphism within the entire amplified product). This corresponds to an average nucleotide heterozygosity of 0.05% and 0.03%, respectively, which is considerably lower than that found in other studies of spruce and pine. Thus, the advantages of COS markers for constructing syntenic maps are offset by their lower polymorphism. Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

Strategies for antigen choice and priming of dendritic cells influence the polarization and efficacy of antitumor T-cell responses in dendritic cell–based cancer vaccination

Dendritic cells (DCs) primed with tumor antigens (Ags) can stimulate tumor rejection. This study was aimed at evaluating the polarization of T-cell responses using various DC Ag-priming strategies for vaccination purposes. DCs cocultured with irradiated apoptotic tumor cells, DC-tumor fusions, and DCs pulsed with freeze-thaw tumor lysate Ags served as Ag-primed DCs, with EG7 tumor cells (class II negative) expressing OVA as the model Ag. DCs loaded with class I– and class II–restricted OVA synthetic peptides served as controls. Primed DCs were assessed by the in vitro activation of B3Z OVA-specific CD8 T cells and the proliferation of OVA-specific CD8 and CD4 T cells from OT-I and OT-II TCR transgenic mice, respectively. In vivo responses were measured by tumor regression following treatment with Ag-primed DCs and by CTL assays. Quantification of IL-2, IL-4, IL-5, IFN-, and TNF- by cytometric bead array (CBA) assay determined the polarization of TH1/TH2 responses, whereas H-2 K^b /SIINFEKL tetramers monitored the expansion of OVA-specific T cells. DC-EG7 hybrids stimulated both efficient class I and class II OVA responses, showing that DC-tumor hybrids are also capable of class II cross-presentation. The hybrids also induced the most potent CTLs, offered the highest protection against established EG7 tumors and also induced the highest stimulation of IFN- and TNF- production. DCs cocultured with irradiated EG7 were also effective at inducing OVA-specific responses, however with slightly reduced potency to those evoked by the hybrids. DCs loaded with lysates Ags were much less efficient at stimulating any of the OVA-specific T-cell responses, showed very little antitumor protection, and stimulated a weak TH1 response, overbalanced by an IL-5 TH2 response. The strategy of Ag-loading clearly influences the ability of DCs to polarize T cells for a TH1/TH2 response and thus determines the outcome of the elicited immune response, during various vaccination protocols.Abbreviations DC Dendritic cell - FSC Forward scatter - SSC Side scatter - TC Tumor cells This work was supported by Grant 9853 from the Leukaemia Research Fund, UK; a JRC studentship from GKT; and the Lewis Family Research Trust