To test the feasibility of synthesizing recombinant peptide hormones by exon deletion and exchange, we have constructed and expressed hybrid human growth hormone (hGH)-rat prolactin (rPrl) genes in which the third and fourth exons of the hGH gene are deleted and separately replaced by the corresponding exons of the rPrl gene. These exon deletion and exon exchange genes were inserted into an SV4...

T cells modified with chimeric antigen receptor are an attractive strategy to treat Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) associated malignancies. The EBV latent membrane protein 1 (LMP1) is a 66-KD integral membrane protein encoded by EBV that consists of transmembrane-spanning loops. Previously, we have identified a functional signal chain variable fragment (scFv) that specifically recognizes LMP1 through...

Background: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) causes acute and chronic human hepatitis infections. Due to the high genetic diversity and high rates of mutations in the genetic material so far there is no approved vaccine against HCV. Materials and Methods: The aim of this study was to determination B and T cell conserved epitopes of E1 and E2 proteins from HCV and construction of a chimeric pepti...

Support Vector Machines (SVMs) have become popular due to their accuracy in classifying sparse data sets. Their computational time can be virtually independent of the size of the feature vector. SVMs have been shown to out perform other learning machines on many data sets. In this paper, we use SVMs to detect a car in a lane of traffic. Digital pictures of various driving situations are used. T...

Fusion protein technology represents the strategy to achieve rapid, efficient, and cost-effective proteinexpression. Epsilon and Beta toxins are the most potent Clostridial toxins and cause disease in animals.This study describes in silico fusion of Clostridium perfringens types D and B epsilon and beta toxin genesthat was used for cloning in E.coli. The etx and cpb genes were...

Objective: We investigated the effect of a potent TGFβ (transforming growth factor β) inhibitor peptide (P144) from betaglycan/TGFβ receptor III on aortic aneurysm development in Marfan syndrome mouse model. Approach and Results: used chimeric gene encoding P144 linked to apolipoprotein A-I via flexible linker expressed by hepatotropic adeno-associated vector. Two experimental approaches were p...

Materials and Methods Targeted disruption of the MFG-E8 gene The MFG-E8 chromosomal gene was isolated from a 129/sv mouse λ gene library. Exons 4–6 were replaced by a neo gene and a DNA fragment coding for the diphtheria toxin A fragment was inserted downstream of the MFG-E8 gene to produce the targeting vector. To produce MFG-E8 null mice, R1 ES cells were transfected with the targeting vector...

Adenovirus (Ad) vectors are widely used for gene transfer. Efficient gene transfer into malignant cells is an important requirement for anticancer gene therapy, but transgene expression after transfer with adenoviral vectors varies among different cancer cell lines. Recently, Ad vectors containing chimeric type 5 and 35 fiber proteins have been developed. We evaluated the expression of coxsacki...

introduction: embryonic stem (es) cells are pluripotent cells derived from the inner cell mass of blastocysts. these cells are appropriate for creation of animal models of human genetic diseases, the study of gene functions in vivo and differentiation into specific types as potential therapeutic agents for several diseases. we describe here production of transgenic chimeric mouse blastocysts by...

Coronary artery disease frequently involves repeated bouts of myocardial ischemia. To automatically up-regulate the cardioprotective transgenes under hypoxic ischemia, a "vigilant vector" gene therapy system was developed and tested in a rat embryonic myocardial cell line (H9c2). In the vigilant vector, a hypoxia response element-incorporated promoter was used as a switch to turn on the gene ex...