Pro- and antiinflammatory cytokines and mediators were measured in 39 patients with acute life-threatening meningococcal infections classified into 3 groups: A, meningitis without shock (n = 20); B, meningitis with shock (n = 9); and C, shock without meningitis (n = 10). The plasma concentrations of proinflammatory endotoxin, tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha), interleukin (IL)-6, and IL-8...

Laminin-5 is an isoform of laminin that consists of alpha 3, beta 3, and gamma 2 chains and has potent cell adhesion- and cell migration-promoting activities. In this study, five subdomains in the COOH-terminal globular (G) domain of human laminin alpha 3 chain were individually expressed in Escherichia coli, and their biological activities were investigated. Recombinant G2, G4, and G5 domains ...

Oligoribonucleotides with specific sequences derived from the satellite RNA of tobacco ringspot virus undergo autolytic cleavage at the CpA phosphodiester that is the junction between unit sequences of multimeric satellite RNA. Buzayan et al. (Nucleic Acids Res., 16, 4009-4023 (1988)) showed that an oligoribonucleotide with 97 satellite RNA-derived nucleotide residues self-cleaved with greatly ...

The carbohydrate-binding specificity of Aleuria aurantia lectin was investigated by analyzing the behavior of a variety of fucose-containing oligosaccharides on an A. aurantia lectin-Sepharose column. Studies with complex-type oligosaccharides obtained from various glycoproteins by hydrazinolysis and their partial degradation fragments indicated that the presence of the alpha-fucosyl residue li...

The average flow speed of alpha particles relative to protons in the solar wind is observed to be of the order of or less than the Alfven speed. This flow, if sufficiently large, can lead to two distinct types of electromagnetic alpha/proton instabilities: magnetosonic and Alfven. Spatially homogeneous two-dimensional hybrid simulations of collisionless plasmas are used to study these growing m...

The current-voltage power law exponent, alpha, for electron tunneling into chiral Luttinger liquids at the fractional quantum Hall edge is found to exhibit a plateaulike structure at alpha close to 3 as the filling factor, nu, is varied. The presence of a plateau near alpha = 3 strongly suggests a fundamental connection between alpha and the structure of the underlying quantum ground states ass...

D-Aldohexopyranoside:cytochrome c oxidoreductase (ACO) was strongly induced by cellobiose, alpha-methylglucoside, beta-methylglucoside, kojibiose, and sophorose. Induction was rapid, and ACO was readily detectable within 10 min after addition of cellobiose as inducer. Although not measurable for 30 to 40 min after addition of inducer, once started, the rate of induction with alpha-methylglucosi...

Native alpha-cyclodextrin (alpha-CD) is found to spontaneously form films at aqueous solution/air interfaces. Shape-response measurements to volume perturbations on drops hanging from a capillary indicate that temperature and sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) concentration strongly modify the viscoelastic properties of such films. By using isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC), Brewster angle micro...