Rash and fever illness caused by herpes simplex virus type 1 needs to be distinguished from hand, foot and mouth disease / 病毒学报

An epidemic of rash and fever illnesses suspected of hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) occurred in Gansu Province of China in 2008, laboratory tests were performed in order to identify the pathogen that caused this epidemic. Eight clinical specimens collected from the 4 patients (each patient has throat swab and herpes fluid specimens) with rash and febrile illness, were inoculated onto RD and HEp-2 cells for virus isolation, and the viral nucleic acid was then extracted with the positive virus isolates, the dual-channel real-time reverse transcript-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was performed to detect the nucleic acid of human enterovirus (HEV) in the viral isolates at the same time. For the viral isolates with the negative results of HEV, a sequence independent single primer amplification technique (SISPA) was used for "unknown pathogen" identification. Totally, 6 viral isolates were identified as herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1). Comprehensive analyses results of the clinical manifestations of the patients, epidemiological findings and laboratory test indicated that this epidemic of rash and febrile illness was caused by HSV-1. The differences among the gG region of 6 HSV-1 isolates at nucleotide level and amino acid level were all small, and the identities were up to 98. 8% and 97.9%, respectively, showing that this outbreak was caused by only one viral transmission chain of HSV-1. HSV-1 and other viruses that cause rash and febrile illnesses need differential diagnosis with HFMD. The etiology of rash and febrile illness is sometimes difficult to distinguish from the clinical symptoms and epidemiological data, the laboratory diagnosis is therefore critical.

Characterization of human rhinovirus in children with acute respiratory infections in Gansu Province during 2011 / 病毒学报

To study the epidemic characteristics of human rhinovirus (HRV) in children with acute respiratory infections in Gansu Province. 286 throat swabs were collected from children with acute respiratory in fections in Gansu Province during 2011. Multiplex reverse transcription-PCR (multiplex RT-PCR) assay was used to screen those specimens for detection of common respiratory tract pathogens. For HRV-positive samples, nested reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (nested RT-PCR) was performed to amplify VP1 and VP4/VP2 gene fragments of HRV. The VP4/VP2 and VP1 regions of HRV-positive samples were sequenced and performed genotype analysis. Of 286 specimens fested, 27 were positive for HRV by multiplex RT-PCR and nested RT-PCR, of which 16 children were made (16/185), 8.64%) and 11 female (11/101,10.89%). The positive rate was 9.44% (27/286). The mean age of HRV-positive children was 3 years in this study, children less than one year old had the highest proportion 44.4% (12/ 27, 44.4%). The highest HRV positive rate fell on May, 2011 (6/27, 22.2%). Common cold accounted for the highest proportion, 12.24% (12/98) followed by pneumonia, 8.50% (13/153). The remaining 2 cases were bronchitis. Sequence analysis showed HRV A was the predominant genotype in Gansu Province in 2011, accounting for 84.62% (22/26) of positive cases, followed by HRV C (11.54%, 3/26) and only one HRV B was detected (3.85%, 1/26). HRV could be detected throughout the year in Gansu Province and primarily infected children under one year old. The group A was the epidemic genotype of HRV and move than one genotype existed in Gansu Province during 2011.

Recent advance in new types of human adenovirus / 病毒学报

Adenoviruses are double stranded DNA viruses that cause an array of diseases. More than 60 types of human adenovirus have been reported so far. The discovery and division of human adenovirus types 52-67 are based on the genomic sequencing and bioinformatic analysisy and different from the pre-existing 51 serotypes identified by traditional serological methods in composition and pathogenicity. The majority of new types of human adenovirus are homologous recombination within the same subgenus, and as a result, certain new serotypes acquire different pathogenicity. Recombination is a common evolutionary way for human adenovirus, however, the mechanism of recombination and potenital danger to human remain unknown. As new types of human adenovirus have been receiving increasing attention, in this review, the latest progress in new types of human adenovirus is summarized.

Analysis the viral etiology of fever and respiratory tract infection syndrome in Shaanxi province / 中华实验和临床病毒学杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>Analysis the viral pathogenic spectrum for patients with fever and respiratory tract infection syndrome in Shaanxi province during 2010 and investigate the molecular epidemiology characteristics of respiratory syncytial virus.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>A total of 208 patients' pharyngeal swabs were collected based on surveillance definition from January 2010 to January 2011 and screened for sixteen human respiratory virus types/subtypes by Qiaxcel-based multiplex reverse transcription-PCR assay, including HRV,HCoV, Flu, HPIV, ADV, HRSV, HMPV and HBoV and investigate molecular epidemiology of HRSV by sequencing and phylogenetic analysis of the C-terminal second hypervariable region of the G gene.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>109 out of 208 specimens (53%) were positive for one or more viruses. HRSV(42. 2%) was the dominant pathogen detected, followed by Flu(24. 5%), PIV(20%), HRV(13.6%) and ADV( 10.9%),there were also 8 strains of HCoV, 5 strains of HMPV and 3 strains of HBoV detected. The results showed that 22 specimens were positive for two or more viruses, PIV (14/22) was the most frequently detected viral agent among co-infection specimens, and the highest incidence of mixed infection is aged 15-39 years group (P < 0.05). The overall viral detection rate was no related to age. In addition to Flu, HMPV and PIV, other viruses (HRV, HBoV, HCoV, ADV, RSV) mainly infected 0 to 4 years old children. Among 46 HRSV positive specimens, 42 HRSV-A strains clustered into NA1 genotype and two HRSV-B strains clustered into two genotypes, BA9 and GB2.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>HRSV is the dominate pathogen collected from patients with fever and respiratory tract infection syndrome in Shaanxi and HRSV A is the predominant subtype. For most viruses, infection was most prevalent among children aged <4 years. PIV was the most common pathogen in co-infection.</p>

Construction of NF-kappaB siRNA expression vector / 中南大学学报(医学版)

OBJECTIVE@#To construct a NF-kappaB siRNA expression vector and to detect the specific silencing effect of the siRNA on the expression of NF-kappaB protein.@*METHODS@#pcDNA3.1/CT-GFP-TOPO recombinant eukaryotic expression vector and pSilencer 1.0-U6-siRNA-NF-kappaB recombinant vector were constructed respectively. These 2 recombination plasmids were co-transfected into COS-7 cells, and the NF-kappaB silence induced by RNAi was detected by Western blot and the inverted fluorescence microscope.@*RESULTS@#The levels of NF-kappaB protein in COS-7 cells could be silenced effectively and specifically by pSilencer 1.0-U6-siRNA- NF-kappa recombinant vector. The expression of NF-kappaB protein was reduced gradually with the increase of pSilencer 1.0-U6-siRNA- NF-kappaB recombinant vector,which could be detected by Western blot under the inverted fluorescence microscope.@*CONCLUSION@#NF-kappaB siRNA expression vector is constructed successfully.

On-line estimation of concentration parameters in fermentation processes / 浙江大学学报（英文版）（B辑：生物医学和生物技术）

It has long been thought that bioprocess, with their inherent measurement difficulties and complex dynamics, posed almost insurmountable problems to engineers. A novel software sensor is proposed to make more effective use of those measurements that are already available, which enable improvement in fermentation process control. The proposed method is based on mixtures of Gaussian processes (GP) with expectation maximization (EM) algorithm employed for parameter estimation of mixture of models. The mixture model can alleviate computational complexity of GP and also accord with changes of operating condition in fermentation processes, i.e., it would certainly be able to examine what types of process-knowledge would be most relevant for local models' specific operating points of the process and then combine them into a global one. Demonstrated by on-line estimate of yeast concentration in fermentation industry as an example, it is shown that soft sensor based state estimation is a powerful technique for both enhancing automatic control performance of biological systems and implementing on-line monitoring and optimization.