Increased biodiversity in the environment improves the humoral response of rats.

Previous studies have compared the immune systems of wild and of laboratory rodents in an effort to determine how laboratory rodents differ from their naturally occurring relatives. This comparison serves as an indicator of what sorts of changes might exist between modern humans living in Western culture compared to our hunter-gatherer ancestors. However, immunological experiments on wild-caught animals are difficult and potentially confounded by increased levels of stress in the captive animals. In this study, the humoral immune responses of laboratory rats in a traditional laboratory environment and in an environment with enriched biodiversity were examined following immunization with a panel of antigens. Biodiversity enrichment included colonization of the laboratory animals with helminths and co-housing the laboratory animals with wild-caught rats. Increased biodiversity did not apparently affect the IgE response to peanut antigens following immunization with those antigens. However, animals housed in the enriched biodiversity setting demonstrated an increased mean humoral response to T-independent and T-dependent antigens and increased levels of "natural" antibodies directed at a xenogeneic protein and at an autologous tissue extract that were not used as immunogens.

Evaluation of a density-based rapid diagnostic test for sickle cell disease in a clinical setting in Zambia.

Although simple and low-cost interventions for sickle cell disease (SCD) exist in many developing countries, child mortality associated with SCD remains high, in part, because of the lack of access to diagnostic tests for SCD. A density-based test using aqueous multiphase systems (SCD-AMPS) is a candidate for a low-cost, point-of-care diagnostic for SCD. In this paper, the field evaluation of SCD-AMPS in a large (n = 505) case-control study in Zambia is described. Of the two variations of the SCD-AMPS used, the best system (SCD-AMPS-2) demonstrated a sensitivity of 86% (82-90%) and a specificity of 60% (53-67%). Subsequent analysis identified potential sources of false positives that include clotting, variation between batches of SCD-AMPS, and shipping conditions. Importantly, SCD-AMPS-2 was 84% (62-94%) sensitive in detecting SCD in children between 6 months and 1 year old. In addition to an evaluation of performance, an assessment of end-user operability was done with health workers in rural clinics in Zambia. These health workers rated the SCD-AMPS tests to be as simple to use as lateral flow tests for malaria and HIV.

Highly abundant proteins favor more stable 3D structures in yeast.

To understand the variation of protein sequences in nature, we need to reckon with evolutionary constraints that are biophysical, cellular, and ecological. Here, we show that under the global selection against protein misfolding, there exists a scaling among protein folding stability, protein cellular abundance, and effective population size. The specific scaling implies that the several-orders-of-magnitude range of protein abundances in the cell should leave imprints on extant protein structures, a prediction that is supported by our structural analysis of the yeast proteome.

Amphiphilic α-helical potential: a putative folding motif adding few constraints to protein evolution.

Evidence from a number of studies indicates that protein folding is dictated not only by factors stabilizing the native state, but also by potentially independent factors that create folding pathways. How natural selection might cope simultaneously with two independent factors was addressed in this study within the framework of the "Lim-model" of protein folding, which postulates that the early stages of folding of all globular proteins, regardless of their native structure, are directed at least in part by potential to form amphiphilic α-helices. For this purpose, the amphiphilic α-helical potential in randomly ordered amino acid sequences and the conservation in phylogeny of amphiphilic α-helical potential within various proteins were assessed. These analyses revealed that amphiphilic α-helical potential is a common occurrence in random sequences, and that the presence of amphiphilic α-helical potential is present but not conserved in phylogeny within a given protein. The results suggest that the rapid formation of molten globules and the variable behavior of those globules depending on the protein may be a fundamental property of polymers of naturally occurring amino acids more so than a trait that must be derived or maintained by natural selection. Further, the results point toward the utility of randomly occurring process in protein function and evolution, and suggest that the formation of efficient pathways that determine early processes in protein folding, unlike the formation of stable, native protein structure, does not present a substantial hurdle during the evolution of amino acid sequences.