Solitary fibrous tumor of the parapharyngeal space.

Solitary fibrous tumors are benign neoplasms of mesenchymal origin. They usually arise from the visceral or parietal pleura and peritoneum, although they have been found in many areas throughout the body. We report a case of solitary fibrous tumor of the parapharyngeal space. Microscopically, the tumor contained spindle cells with areas of marked hypercellularity without a definitepattern. Consistent with a benign lesion, there were few mitoses and no necrosis. The tumor cells stained strongly positive for CD34 and vimentin. At the 2-year follow-up, the patient was well and free of local and/or distant disease.

5-Bromodeoxyuridine in vivo labelling of M13 DNA, and its use as a non-radioactive probe for hybridization experiments.

We describe the in vivo production of 5-bromodeoxyuridine- (5-BUdR) labelled M13 DNA by a thymine-requiring Escherichia coli strain. We show that the 5-BUdR-labelled M13 single-stranded DNA is not extruded into the culture medium, but accumulates inside the bacterial cells. On the basis of this observation, a procedure involving FPLC gel filtration already reported and used for the isolation of plasmid DNA has been adapted for the isolation of at least 90% pure 5-BUdR-labelled single-stranded DNA. An M13 probe, containing part of the Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) genome was constructed, and the corresponding 5-BUdR-labelled single-stranded DNA was used in hybridization experiments to detect homologous HBV target DNA. Picogram amounts (10(-19) moles) of the probe itself or the target DNA could be detected, by monoclonal anti-5-BUdR antibodies in an immunoenzymatic assay.

Rapid large-scale purification of plasmid DNA by medium or low pressure gel filtration. Application: construction of thermoamplifiable expression vectors.

This paper describes a new method of plasmid DNA purification which is fast and reliable enough for most purposes in recombinant DNA technology. The present method does not require the use of toxic chemicals such as phenol or ethidium bromide, costly ultracentrifugation procedures or other processes which can modify the supercoiled structure of the plasmids, such as adsorption on glass fiber. This method is based on the principle of gel filtration chromatography, at low pressure (1 bar) or medium pressure (between 5 and 10 bars), using Sephacryl S1000 or Superose 6B. It permits recovery of plasmids: in preparative quantities (from 300 micrograms to 4 mg), exempt from RNA, DNA and protein contamination, and suitable for various common genetic engineering procedures immediately after purification. To test the reliability of the technique as well as the degree of purification, the plasmids were used to construct thermoamplifiable vectors, carrying the lacUV5 promoter and the 5' end of the beta-galactosidase gene with a single EcoR1 site in each of the three possible translational phases. This set of vectors is designed for the expression of foreign genes as hybrid proteins in Escherichia coli.