Promastigotes of Leishmania braziliensis, L. donovani, L. major and L. mexicana recently derived from tissue amastigotes were cultured in Schneider's Drosophila medium supplemented with 20% (v/v) heat-inactivated foetal calf serum and 25 micrograms gentamicin sulfate/ml at pH 5.5. These cultures produced more metacyclic promastigotes in their stationary-phase populations than others cultured at...

background: zoonotic cutaneous leishmaniasis (zcl) is an expanding disease and public health problem in iran. in the current study, natural leishmania infection rate and seasonal fluctuation of the infection in rhombomys opimus population of a hyperendemic focus of zcl in iran was investigated. methods:   the study was conducted from october 2006 to october 2008 in esfahan province, central par...

background: cutaneous leishmaniasis constitutes a major public health problem in many parts of the world including iran. the primary objective of this study was to identify leishmania spe­cies in endemic districts of kerman province, south-eastern iran . methods: this study was conducted by random sampling as cross- sectional descriptive between 2008 and 2010. overall, 203 skin scraping smears ...

the leishmania major parasite surface antigen-2 (psa-2) is a family of glycoinositol phospholipids anchored glycoprotoins expressed in both promastigotes and amastigotes. promastigote psa-2 comprises three polypeptides with approximate molecular weight of 96, 80 and 50 kda. amastigote express a distinct but closely psa-2 polypeptide with molecular weight of 50 kda. in this study fusion of sp2/0...

The Ets family of transcription factors function as key regulators of multiple aspects of immune cell development and function. To date, Ets-1 has been implicated in regulating early stages of thymic maturation and lymphocyte function and homeostasis. This report describes a novel role for Ets-1 in supporting later stages of thymic selection, in that positive selection of MHC class I-restricted...