production of alpha toxin. Various kinds of enzymatic digests of protein have been used as a source of •gtoxin toxin factor•h (Adams et al., 1945; Logan et al., 1945; van Heyningen, 1948). Adams, Hendee and Pappenheimer (1947) showed that at least two factors present in the enzymatic digests of certain proteins and extracts of pancreas were necessary for the maximum production of alpha toxin in...

A murine monoclonal antibody generated against staphylococcal alpha-toxin was shown to react only with the monomeric (native), 3S form of the toxin. A sensitive sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) constructed with this antibody permitted detection of 0.25 to 0.5 ng of native toxin per ml. Toxin oligomers formed either by heat aggregation in solution, on target erythrocyte membran...

AIMS To investigate the hypothesis that commonly occurring bacterial toxins cause sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) by (1), determining in which tissues bacterial toxins are concentrated after intravenous injection in rats; and (2), seeing if the same tissues contain detectable toxins in cases of SIDS. METHODS The tissue distribution of intravenously injected staphylococcal enterotoxin A (S...

A monoclonal antibody (BALB/c mouse) with specificity for a neutralizing epitope on the epsilon-toxin produced by Clostridium perfringens type D was used to raise anti-idiotypic antibodies (anti-Id) in different strains of mice and rabbits. These were purified and used in cross-immunization studies to induce anti-(anti-idiotype). All strains of mice and rabbits immunized with BALB/c-derived ant...

A halotolerant yeast, Pichia farinosa KK1 strain, produces a unique killer toxin termed SMK toxin (salt-mediated killer toxin) which shows its maximum killer activity in the presence of 2 M NaCl. The toxin consists of two distinct subunits, alpha and beta, which are tightly linked without a disulfide bond under acidic conditions, even in the presence of 6 M urea. Under neutral conditions, howev...

Toxic shock syndrome (TSS) is primarily caused by toxic shock syndrome toxin-1 (TSST-1) and staphylococcal enterotoxin B (SEB). These toxins belong to a family of pyrogenic toxin superantigens (PTSAgs) produced by Staphylococcus aureus and exhibit several shared biological properties, including the induction of massive cytokine release and Vbeta-specific T-cell proliferation. The crystal struct...

background: in lupus nephritis (ln), deposition of pathogenic autoantibodies in the glomeruli is mediated via cross-reactivity with alpha-actinin. association of serum alpha-actinin antibody (aαa) with ln has been shown in a few studies but the results are controversial. methods: eighty patients into entered the study. the diagnosis of sle was confirmed according to the american college of rheu...