Analysis of heterogeneity in exon 4 of Coxsackievirus and Adenovirus receptor gene in dilated cardiomyopathy / 中华心血管病杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To investigate the genetic pathogenesis of dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) by examining the heterogeneity of Coxsackievirus binding domain (exon 4) of Adenovirus receptor (CAR) in DCM patients and healthy adults, and to detect possible mutation site in exon 4.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>Using polymerase chain reaction (PCR), we amplified exon 4 of CAR DNA extracted from blood samples obtained from 50 DCM patients and 40 healthy adults. The PCR products were screened with single-strand conformation polymorphism (SSCP) and then sequenced alternatively based on the SSCP results.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>The segment of CAR exon 4 was successfully amplified and there was no single strand conformational disparity in all samples examined by SSCP. Sequence analysis demonstrated that all amplified sequences of CAR exon 4 from samples of the two groups were identical and there was no genetic heterogeneity of CAR exon 4 between the two groups.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>The genetic heterogeneity of CAR exon 4 might not be responsible for the pathogenesis of DCM.</p>

Optimization of a Liquid Chip System for the Detection of Serum Biomarkers of Colorectal Cancer and Its Application / 中国生物工程杂志

Liquid chip technology have been licensed to be used in clinic because of its advantage of high-throughput, high-sensitivity, good signal to noise ratio, reaction in liquid phase, convenient operation and short time consuming, etc. The optimization of a liquid chip system for the detection of serum biomarkers of colorectal tumour and initial application in the detection of CEA were studied. The optimized reaction conditions of liquid chip were determined through orthogonal design after it was prepared. The results showed that the consuming reaction time of the coated antibody and the antigen was 1hour. The microspheres, biotinylated detecion antibody and the consuming complexes and avidin-PE time of the microspheres and the biotinylated tested antibody was 1hour, 1hour and 15minutes respectively.the consuming time of the complexes and avidin-PE was fifteen minutes, The optimized dilution of the biotinylated tested detection antibody was 1∶300 and the optimized concentration of avidin-PE was 12?g/ml. Totally 55 clinical samples were detected by the liquid chip and by Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) simultaneously and the results of the two methods were compared. The results of the two methods showed good correlation between positive and negative samples but the detection limits and the dynamic ranges of the liquid chip method were more sensitive and wider than those of the ELISA. The multiple tumour biomarkers may be detected simultaneously and the time of clinical test and manpower requirements were reduced by the liquid chip method.

Expression of recombinant human cytomegalovirus fusion proteins pp150/MDBP fragments and its application / 生物工程学报

Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) infection is an ubiquitous herpesvirus disease in human populations. It is rarely pathogenic to healthy adults, yet it may cause severe outcome to organ transplant recipients, the immunocompromised individuals and pregnant women. Using DNA from HCMV AD169 strain as template, the UL32 gene encoding pp150 protein fragment and the UL57 gene encoding MDBP protein fragment were amplified by PCR technique. After the construction of cloning vector pMD18-T-UL32, pMD18-T-UL57, pMD18-T-UL32/UL57 and expression vector pET-11a-UL32/UL57, the recombinant fusion proteins pp150/MDBP were induced with IPTG in BL21 host strain. The results showed that the relative molecular weight of recombinant fusion proteins pp150/MDBP is about 27 kD, the product of fusion proteins takes 17.45% in the total proteins in host bacteria, the analytical result was positive to the fusion proteins pp150/MDBP via Western blot technique, while the purified recombinant fusion proteins have strong antigenicity detected by ELISA and protein chip compared with whole virus antigens from HCMV. It was demonstrated that when used for the detection of serum from the clinical patients it has the same detection rate compared with the whole virus antigen. It needs further research for application.