Search results for "vectors"
showing 10 items of 601 documents
Vertical transmission of naturally occurring Bunyamwera and insect-specific flavivirus infections in mosquitoes from islands and mainland shores of L…
2018
Background Many arboviruses transmitted by mosquitoes have been implicated as causative agents of both human and animal illnesses in East Africa. Although epidemics of arboviral emerging infectious diseases have risen in frequency in recent years, the extent to which mosquitoes maintain pathogens in circulation during inter-epidemic periods is still poorly understood. This study aimed to investigate whether arboviruses may be maintained by vertical transmission via immature life stages of different mosquito vector species. Methodology We collected immature mosquitoes (egg, larva, pupa) on the shores and islands of Lake Baringo and Lake Victoria in western Kenya and reared them to adults. Mo…
Analysis of inhomogeneously filled waveguides using a bi-orthonormal-basis method
2000
A general theoretical formulation to analyze inhomogeneously filled waveguides with lossy dielectrics is presented in this paper. The wave equations for the tranverse-field components are written in terms of a nonself-adjoint linear operator and its adjoint. The eigenvectors of this pair of linear operators define a biorthonormal-basis, allowing for a matrix representation of the wave equations in the basis of an auxiliary waveguide. Thus, the problem of solving a system of differential equations is transformed into a linear matrix eigenvalue problem. This formulation is applied to rectangular waveguides loaded with an arbitrary number of dielectric slabs centered at arbitrary points. The c…
Structure of eigenvectors of random regular digraphs
2018
Let $d$ and $n$ be integers satisfying $C\leq d\leq \exp(c\sqrt{\ln n})$ for some universal constants $c, C>0$, and let $z\in \mathbb{C}$. Denote by $M$ the adjacency matrix of a random $d$-regular directed graph on $n$ vertices. In this paper, we study the structure of the kernel of submatrices of $M-z\,{\rm Id}$, formed by removing a subset of rows. We show that with large probability the kernel consists of two non-intersecting types of vectors, which we call very steep and gradual with many levels. As a corollary, we show, in particular, that every eigenvector of $M$, except for constant multiples of $(1,1,\dots,1)$, possesses a weak delocalization property: its level sets have cardin…
Study of periodic Dielectric Frequency-Selective Surfaces under 3D plane wave incidence
2016
A periodic Dielectric Frequency-Selective Surface (DFSS) is studied under 3D plane-wave incidence, whose unit cell in the periodic direction is composed of a dielectric grating and a homogeneous dielectric layer. The structure is excited by a linearly polarized plane-wave. The procedure for computing the Brillouin diagram of the structure under 2D plane-wave incidence with TE or TM polarization was already described by the authors, and the extension to the 3D incidence case has been performed in a similar way. Following the same formalism, it has been obtained the Generalized Scattering Matrix (GSM) of one period of the infinite periodic lattice. This requires the knowledge of the modal spe…
Targeting of biotinylated compounds to its target tissue using a low-density lipoprotein receptor–avidin fusion protein
2003
The very high binding affinity of avidin to biotin is one of the highest to occur in nature. We constructed a fusion protein composed of avidin and the endocytotic LDL receptor in order to target biotinylated molecules to cells of the desired tissues. In addition to the native avidin, charge-mutated and nonglycosylated avidins were utilized as part of the fusion proteins, in order to modify its properties. All of the fusion protein versions retained the biotin-binding capacity. Although the specificity was not increased, however, fusion proteins composed of natural avidin and nonglycosylated avidin bound most efficiently to the biotinylated ligands. Fluorescence microscopy and atomic force …
Expression and trafficking of fluorescent viral membrane proteins in baculovirus-transduced BHK cells
2004
Baculovirus vectors show promise as a novel tool for gene delivery into mammalian cells and gene transfer with wild-type baculovirus has been demonstrated both in vitro and in vivo. To study expression and intracellular trafficking of foreign viral membrane proteins in baculovirus-transduced mammalian cells, the envelope proteins, E1 and E2, of rubella virus (RV) were chosen as a model. The enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) and a red fluorescent protein (RFP) were fused to the C-terminus of E1 and E2, respectively. The proteins were cloned under a cytomegalovirus (CMV) promoter and expressed as fluorescent fusion proteins in baculovirus-transduced baby hamster kidney (BHK) cells. Ex…
Specific Binding of Baculoviruses Displaying gp64 Fusion Proteins to Mammalian Cells
2001
Viral vectors displaying specific ligand binding moieties have raised an increasing interest in the area of targeted gene therapy. In this report, we describe baculovirus vectors displaying either a functional single chain antibody fragment (scFv) specific for the carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) or the synthetic IgG binding domains (ZZ) derived from protein A of Staphylococcus aureus. In addition, the vectors were engineered to incorporate a reporter gene encoding the enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) under the transcriptional regulation of the cytomegalovirus (CMV) IE promoter. Display of the targeting moieties on the viral surface was achieved through fusion to the N-terminus of gp…
Multiple solutions for strongly resonant Robin problems
2018
We consider nonlinear (driven by the p†Laplacian) and semilinear Robin problems with indefinite potential and strong resonance with respect to the principal eigenvalue. Using variational methods and critical groups, we prove four multiplicity theorems producing up to four nontrivial smooth solutions.
Improving baculovirus transduction of mammalian cells by surface display of a RGD-motif
2006
An RGD-containing peptide, comprising 23 amino acids from the foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) VP1 protein was engineered into the envelope of Autographa californica nuclear polyhedrosis virus surface (AcNPV) using two different display strategies. The RGD-motif is a well-described tripeptide, that by binding to cell surface integrins facilitates virus entry into cells. This epitope was displayed, either by directly modifying the native major envelope protein gp64 of AcNPV, or by incorporating a second, modified version of gp64 onto the virus surface. Transduction efficiencies of four mammalian cell lines were compared by detecting the expression of the reporter gene green fluorescent pr…
Adiabatic evolution for systems with infinitely many eigenvalue crossings
1998
International audience; We formulate an adiabatic theorem adapted to models that present an instantaneous eigenvalue experiencing an infinite number of crossings with the rest of the spectrum. We give an upper bound on the leading correction terms with respect to the adiabatic limit. The result requires only differentiability of the considered projector, and some geometric hypothesis on the local behavior of the eigenvalues at the crossings.