Search results for "VECTOR"

Risk estimation for air travel-induced malaria transmission in central Europe – A mathematical modelling study

2019

Abstract Background Aim of our study was to identify conditions under which malaria transmission caused by imported infectious mosquitoes or travellers could occur at large central European airports, and if such transmission could be sustained by indigenous mosquitoes. Methods We developed a deterministic and a stochastic compartmental Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Recovered-Susceptible (humans)/Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious (mosquitoes) model with two mosquito (imported Anopheles gambiae, indigenous A. plumbeus) and three human (travellers, airport personnel exposed/not exposed to imported A. gambiae) populations. We assessed various scenarios to identify combinations of model parameters…

Cellular and humoral immune responses against cancer: implications for cancer vaccines.

1991

The key issue in tumor immunology is to identify antigens as target structures for a cancer-selective immunological attack in the tumor-bearing host, resulting in tumor rejection. There is a growing detailed understanding of structural and regulatory gene alterations giving rise to candidate rejection antigens and peptides in tumor cells. As well as reviewing the development of new adjuvant and recombinant vector systems, new approaches are suggested for the construction of cancer vaccines.

Mosaic Qβ coats as a new presentation model

1998

The new protein carrier was developed on the basis of recombinant RNA phage Qbeta capsid. C-terminal UGA extension of the short form of Qbeta coat, so-called A1 extension, served as a target for presentation of foreign peptides on the outer surface of mosaic Qbeta particles. In conditions of enhanced UGA suppression, the proportion of A1-extended to short coats in mosaic particles dropped from 48% to 14%, with an increase of the length of A1 extension. A model insertion, short preS1 epitope 31-DPAFR-35 of hepatitis B surface antigen, demonstrated superficial location on the mosaic Qbeta particles and ensured specific antigenicity and immunogenicity.

Specific bovine antibody response against a new recombinant Cryptosporidium parvum antigen containing 4 zinc-finger motifs

2002

A Cryptosporidium parvum sporozoite and oocyst lambda gt11 cDNA library was screened with a hyperimmune rabbit serum that was developed against insoluble fragments of ultrasonicated oocysts. A clone named Cp22.4.1 encoding a protein of 231 amino acids with 4 zinc-finger domains characterized by a Cys-X2-Cys-X4-His-X4-Cys motif was isolated and characterized. There was a complete match between the sequencing data of the coding region of Cp22.4.1 and the corresponding gene at chromosomal level. Cloning in a pBAD-TOPO-TA expression vector permitted to evaluate the antigenicity of the recombinant His-tagged antigen. This antigen was recognized by 2 out of 5 sera from Cryptosporidium immune calv…

Comparative study to predict toxic modes of action of phenols from molecular structures.

2013

Quantitative structure-activity relationship models for the prediction of mode of toxic action (MOA) of 221 phenols to the ciliated protozoan Tetrahymena pyriformis using atom-based quadratic indices are reported. The phenols represent a variety of MOAs including polar narcotics, weak acid respiratory uncouplers, pro-electrophiles and soft electrophiles. Linear discriminant analysis (LDA), and four machine learning techniques (ML), namely k-nearest neighbours (k-NN), support vector machine (SVM), classification trees (CTs) and artificial neural networks (ANNs), have been used to develop several models with higher accuracies and predictive capabilities for distinguishing between four MOAs. M…

Diabetes and aortic root dimension: A controversial subject.

2018

Increased Atherosclerotic Lesions in ApoE Mice With Plasma Phospholipid Transfer Protein Overexpression

2003

Objective— Plasma phospholipid transfer protein (PLTP) is involved in the metabolism of HDL and apolipoprotein B (apoB)-containing lipoproteins. Atherosclerosis susceptibility is decreased in mice with PLTP deficiency that is associated with decreased liver production of apoB-containing lipoproteins and increase in their antioxidant. To investigate additionally the effect of PLTP on the development of atherosclerosis, we overexpressed PLTP in mice. Methods and Results— PLTP was overexpressed in apoE knockout mice using an adenovirus-associated virus (AAV)-mediated system. Plasma PLTP activity was 1.3- to 2-fold higher in mice injected with AAV-PLTP than in mice injected with control AAV-GF…

Binary Hamming codes and Boolean designs

2021

AbstractIn this paper we consider a finite-dimensional vector space $${\mathcal {P}}$$ P over the Galois field $${\text {GF}}(2),$$ GF ( 2 ) , and the family $${\mathcal {B}}_k$$ B k (respectively, $${\mathcal {B}}_k^*$$ B k ∗ ) of all the k-sets of elements of $$\mathcal {P}$$ P (respectively, of $${\mathcal {P}}^*= {\mathcal {P}} \setminus \{0\}$$ P ∗ = P \ { 0 } ) summing up to zero. We compute the parameters of the 3-design $$({\mathcal {P}},{\mathcal {B}}_k)$$ ( P , B k ) for any (necessarily even) k, and of the 2-design $$({\mathcal {P}}^{*},{\mathcal {B}}_k^{*})$$ ( P ∗ , B k ∗ ) for any k. Also, we find a new proof for the weight distribution of the binary Hamming code. Moreover, we…

Almost Planar Homoclinic Loops in R3

1996

AbstractIn this paper we study homoclinic loops of vector fields in 3-dimensional space when the two principal eigenvalues are real of opposite sign, which we call almost planar. We are interested to have a theory for higher codimension bifurcations. Almost planar homoclinic loop bifurcations generically occur in two versions “non-twisted” and “twisted” loops. We consider high codimension homoclinic loop bifurcations under generic conditions. The generic condition forces the existence of a 2-dimensional topological invariant ring (non necessarily unique), which is a topological cylinder in the “non-twisted” case and a topological Möbius band in the “twisted” case. If the third eigenvalue is…

Melnikov functions and Bautin ideal

2001

The computation of the number of limit cycles which appear in an analytic unfolding of planar vector fields is related to the decomposition of the displacement function of this unfolding in an ideal of functions in the parameter space, called the Ideal of Bautin. On the other hand, the asymptotic of the displacement function, for 1-parameter unfoldings of hamiltonian vector fields is given by Melnikov functions which are defined as the coefficients of Taylor expansion in the parameter. It is interesting to compare these two notions and to study if the general estimations of the number of limit cycles in terms of the Bautin ideal could be reduced to the computations of Melnikov functions for…