background: acanthamoeba castellanii is the important cause of amoebic keratitis in iran. the key molecule in pathogene­sis of acanthamoeba keratitis is mannose binding protein (mbp) led to adhesion of amoeba to corneal epithelium. subse­quent to adhesion other cytopathic effects occur. the goal of this study was to identify the molecular characterization of a gene encoding mbp in an iranian is...

Experimental Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis (EAE) is an autoimmune disease in mice which serves as a model for multiple sclerosis in humans [4, 5]. The disease constitutes the direction of immunity towards myelin, an insulatory material that covers neurons. The consequential damage to the central nervous system (CNS) can lead to paralysis and death [6]. EAE can be spontaneously induced by immunis...

We have shown that serum levels of a molecule immunochemically similar to eosinophil granule major basic protein (MBP) are elevated in pregnant women throughout gestation. MBP levels increase during gestation and plateau at approximately 7,500 ng/ml by the 20th wk (greater than 10-fold above normal). Levels return to normal after delivery, with a T1/2 of 13.7 d. The MBP in pregnancy serum is re...

To study the contribution of endogenous myelin basic protein (MBP) to the positive and/or negative selection of the MBP-specific T cell repertoire, we studied the T cell response to MBP in MBP-deficient shiverer and MBP-expressing congenic C3H mice. Immunization with MBP induced a vigorous T cell response in shiverer mice directed against a single I-Ak- restricted immunodominant determinant, th...

Prostate cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer in men and the second leading cause of male cancer death in the United States. Early detection and improved procedures for surgical intervention and radiation therapy have reduced the fatalities; however, there is no effective cure for men with advanced disease and additional therapy is urgently needed. We have previously shown that MBP-1 ...

Amino-terminal fragments of listeriolysin O (LLO) of 240 and 411 residues (fragments LLO240 and LLO411, respectively) were expressed in Escherichia coli as fusion polypeptides with maltose-binding protein (MBP) with the aim of producing specific antigens for use in serological tests. In Western blots (immunoblots) with crude bacterial extracts of the fusion polypeptides, the reactivities of MBP...

Mannan (mannose)-binding protein (MBP) is a C-type serum lectin that plays a key role in innate immunity. MBP forms large multimers (200-600 kDa) and exhibits broad specificity for mannose, N-acetylglucosamine, and fucose. MBP exhibits high affinity for unique oligosaccharides that have been isolated from human colorectal carcinoma (SW1116) cells and characterized as highly fucosylated high m.w...

Traditionally, myelin is viewed as insulation around axons, however, more recent studies have shown it also plays an important role in plasticity, axonal metabolism, and neuroimmune signaling. Myelin is a complex multi-protein structure composed of hundreds of proteins, with Myelin Basic Protein (MBP) being the most studied. MBP has two families: Classic-MBP that is necessary for activity drive...

The early layers of a deep neural net have the fewest parameters, but take up the most computation. In this extended abstract, we propose to only train the hidden layers for a set portion of the training run, freezing them out one-by-one and excluding them from the backward pass. We empirically demonstrate that FreezeOut yields savings of up to 20% wall-clock time during training with 3% loss i...

Myostatin (MSTN) is a potent negative regulator of skeletal muscle growth. MSTN propeptide (MSTNpro) inhibits MSTN binding to its receptor through complex formation with MSTN, implying that MSTNpro can be a useful agent to improve skeletal muscle growth in meat-producing animals. Four different truncated forms of pig MSTNpro containing N-terminal maltose binding protein (MBP) as a fusion partne...