Members of the Mycobacterium avium-Mycobacterium intracellulare (MAI) complex are typeable because each serovar is characterized by its own specific antigenic glycolipid. By means of an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, we studied serum specimens obtained from 148 healthy college students for antibodies to these glycopeptidolipids. Ninety-two (61.5%) of the serum specimens were positive to the...

The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans has become a model system for studying the disease interaction between pathogens and the host. To determine whether the transparent nematode could serve as a useful model for Mycobacterium avium subspecies hominissuis (MAH) infection of the intestinal tract, worms were fed MAH and assayed for the effects of the bacterial infection on the worm. It was observed...

BACKGROUND Although the incidence of pulmonary tuberculosis is decreasing, the number of immunocompetent patients with Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) pulmonary disease is steadily increasing. Therefore, albeit not contagious, MAC pulmonary disease needs to be diagnosed rapidly and accurately. We examined the serodiagnostic contributions of serum immunoglobulin G antibody titers against the s...

It is difficult to distinguish pulmonary disease due to Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) from that due to other mycobacteria, such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium kansasii. We developed an enzyme immunoassay (EIA) for diagnosis of MAC pulmonary diseases that uses glycopeptidolipid (GPL) antigens specific for MAC, and we used it for diagnosis in immunocompetent patients. The mea...

Mycobacterium abscessus has emerged as an important cause of lung infection, particularly in patients with bronchiectasis. Innate immune responses must be highly effective at preventing infection with M. abscessus because it is a ubiquitous environmental saprophyte and normal hosts are not commonly infected. M. abscessus exists as either a glycopeptidolipid (GPL) expressing variant (smooth phen...

We study the kilohertz quasi-periodic oscillations (kHz QPOs) in the low-mass X-ray binaries 4U 1728–34, 4U 1608–52, and Aql X-1. Each source traces out a set of nearly parallel tracks in a frequency vs. X-ray count rate diagram. We find that between two of these tracks, for similar QPO frequency, the 2 − 60 keV source count rate can differ by up to a factor of ∼ 4, whereas at the same time the...

We analyzed a large number of RXTE/PCA observations of Cyg X-1 in the hard and soft spectral states with total exposure time of ≈ 190 and ≈ 10 ksec respectively and time resolution better than ≈ 250 μs in order to investigate its variability down to a few milliseconds time scales. The model of modifications of the power density spectra due to the dead time effect was tested using RXTE observati...

SUMMARY We proposed a tool named MetaTISA with an aim to improve TIS prediction of current gene-finders for metagenomes. The method employs a two-step strategy to predict translation initiation sites (TISs) by first clustering metagenomic fragments into phylogenetic groups and then predicting TISs independently for each group in an unsupervised manner. As evaluated on experimentally verified TI...

UNLABELLED We present a software framework and tool called Protein Interactions And Network Analysis (PIANA) that facilitates working with protein interaction networks by (1) integrating data from multiple sources, (2) providing a library that handles graph-related tasks and (3) automating the analysis of protein-protein interaction networks. PIANA can also be used as a stand-alone application ...