CORRIGENDUM: AIDS and Glycosylation

The authors regret that in this Mini Review a paper by Massanet al. (1990) (J. Immunol., 144, 4628–4632) was citedout of context. In this paper isolates of HIV-1 from peripheralblood mononuclear cells of seropositive individuals (and notmolecular clones as cited) were investigated for their macrophagetropism in vitro.     

Reproducibility of gel-chromatography

We think it worthwhile to other experimenters to mention the following observations. Recently it was noted that gel chromatographic separations of the five fragments resulting from the degradation of cytochrome c by bromocyanogen became dependent on the batch number of the gel. This dependency concerns only separations of unprotected fragments, using 7% (v/v) formic acid as the eluent. The elution profile of protected compounds, which in turn run in 50% (v/v) formic acid, was unaffected.     

How short are we on the goal line of estimating insect-plant interaction in a hyperdiverse tropical environment?

Journal of Insect Conservation - In ecology, dealing with sample design is a constant challenge, especially in interaction networks, where most studies suffer from undersampling. Different sampling...     

Expression of the major surfactant-associated protein, SP-A, in type II cells of human lung before 20 weeks of gestation

In a previous paper (Otto-Verberne et al., Anat. Embryol. 178, 29-39 (1988) we reported that the type II alveolar epithelial cell can be identified in fetal human lung on the basis of morphological and immunological characteristics from 10 to 12 weeks after conception (a.c.) onward. For immunological recognition we used a lung-specific antibody, called SALS-Hu (specific anti-lavage serum, rabbit antihuman). The present immunoblotting experiments, after one-and two-dimensional electrophoresis, showed that SALS-Hu-reactive proteins in lavage fractions obtained from alveolar proteinosis patients exhibited molecular masses of mainly 29, 31 to 36, and 62 to 66 kDa. All SALS-Hu-reactive proteins migrated in the same acidic isoelectric point range (pI 4.4-5.1) and were almost undetectable when we used SALS-Hu preabsorbed with recombinant surfactant-associated protein A. We concluded that SALS-Hu recognizes exclusively isoforms of the major surfactant-associated protein, SP-A. In vitro translation assays in which we used mRNA isolated from adult human lung confirmed that SALS-Hu recognized the 29 to 31 kDa SP-A precursor proteins. These SALS-Hu-immunoreactive precursors for SP-A were already detectable (though in much lower amounts) in human fetuses aged 17 to 18 weeks, indicating that mRNA coding for SP-A is present at that time. We concluded that the cytoplasmic staining of fetal (from 10-12 weeks a.c. onward) and adult human type II cells by SALS-Hu is due to the presence of SP-A.