Discovery of novel immune biomarkers for monitoring of disease prognosis and response to therapy in immune-mediated inflammatory diseases is an important unmet clinical need. Here, we establish a novel framework for immunological biomarker discovery, comparing a conventional (liquid) flow cytometry platform (CFP) and a unique lyoplate-based flow cytometry platform (LFP) in combination with adva...

Enteroviruses can be easily transmitted through the fecal-oral route and cause a diverse array of clinical manifestations. Recent outbreaks associated with enteroviral contamination in aquatic environments have called for the development of a more efficient and accurate virus monitoring system. To develop a simple, rapid, and direct method for identifying enteroviral infections, we generated a ...

Cyan fluorescent proteins (CFP) with tryptophan66-based chromophore are widely used for live cell imaging. In contrast to green and red fluorescent proteins, no charged states of the CFP chromophore have been described. Here, we studied synthetic CFP chromophore and found that its indole group can be deprotonated rather easily (pKa 12.4).We then reproduced this effect in the CFP mCerulean by pl...

"Cystic fibrosis protein" (CFP), a minor serum protein marker of the cystic fibrosis allele, was isolated from serum from patients with cystic fibrosis by use of the "FPLC" high-resolution chromatography system and preparative sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. CFP currently is characterized by its isoelectric point (8.4) on isoelectric focusing. However, after the first...

Forests undergo a long-term development process from young to mature stages, yet the variations in soil nutrients, enzyme activities, microbial diversity, and community composition related forest ages are still unclear. In this study, characteristics of bacterial fungal communities with their corresponding environmental factors young, middle, stages (7, 15, 25-year-old) Chinese fir plantations ...

Important advances have been made in the immunodiagnosis of tuberculosis (TB) based on the detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB)-specific T cells. However, the sensitivity and specificity of the immunological approach are relatively low because there are no specific markers for antigen-specific Th cells, and some of the Th cells that do not produce cytokines can be overlooked using this...

The currently used method for immunological detection of tuberculosis infection, the tuberculin skin test, has low specificity. Antigens specific for Mycobacterium tuberculosis to replace purified protein derivative are therefore urgently needed. We have performed a rigorous assessment of the diagnostic potential of four recently identified antigens (Rv2653, Rv2654, Rv3873, and Rv3878) from gen...

BACKGROUND Tuberculin is still the only available skin test reagent for the diagnosis of mycobacterial infection. The product has a remarkable sensitivity, but poor specificity. Previous studies, including two human phase I clinical trials, have indicated that rdESAT-6 has a potential as an improved skin test reagent. Animal studies have shown that the sensitivity may be increased by inclusion ...

Overlapping peptides of Mycobacterium tuberculosis antigens ESAT-6 and CFP-10 offer increased specificity over the purified protein derivative skin test when they were used in an ex vivo enzyme-linked immunospot (ELISPOT) assay for gamma interferon detection for the diagnosis of M. tuberculosis infection from recent exposure. We assessed whether equivalent results could be obtained for a fusion...