The performance of many desert plant species in North America may decline with the warmer and drier conditions predicted by climate change models, thereby accelerating land degradation and reducing ecosystem productivity. We paired repeat measurements of plant canopy cover with climate at multiple sites across the Chihuahuan Desert over the last century to determine which plant species and func...

Trypanosoma cruzi infection is controlled but not eliminated by host immunity. The T. cruzi trans-sialidase (TS) gene superfamily encodes immunodominant protective antigens, but expression of altered peptide ligands by different TS genes has been hypothesized to promote immunoevasion. We molecularly defined TS epitopes to determine their importance for protection versus parasite persistence. Pe...

During adaptive immune response, pathogen-specific CD8(+) T cells recognize preferentially a small number of epitopes, a phenomenon known as immunodominance. Its biological implications during natural or vaccine-induced immune responses are still unclear. Earlier, we have shown that during experimental infection, the human intracellular pathogen Trypanosoma cruzi restricts the repertoire of CD8...

In previous studies we have shown that a pantothenate auxotroph of Myocbacterium bovis BCG (BCGΔpanCD) expressing HIV-1 subtype C Gag induced Gag-specific immune responses in mice and Chacma baboons after prime-boost immunization in combination with matched rMVA and VLP vaccines respectively. In this study recombinant BCG (rBCG) expressing HIV-1 subtype C reverse transcriptase and a truncated e...

Herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) latency in sensory ganglia such as trigeminal ganglia (TG) is associated with a persistent immune infiltrate that includes effector memory CD8+ T cells that can influence HSV-1 reactivation. In C57BL/6 mice, HSV-1 induces a highly skewed CD8+ T cell repertoire, in which half of CD8+ T cells (gB-CD8s) recognize a single epitope on glycoprotein B (gB498-505), w...

CTL are important in controlling HIV and SIV infection. To quantify cellular immune responses induced by immunization, CD8(+) T cells specific for the subdominant Env p15m and p54m epitopes and/or the dominant Gag p11C epitope were evaluated by tetramer staining in nine macaques immunized with an adenovirus (Ad) 5 host range mutant (Ad5hr)-SIVenv/rev recombinant and in four of nine which also r...

We examine the relic density of light mass dark matter region in inert doublet model (IDM) when dominant process is due to co-annihilation between lightest neutral scalars model. The full one-loop electroweak corrections are computed an on-shell scheme and found be well approximated as effective cross-section expressed terms $Z$-observables. subdominant which consists annihilation into $W$ off-...

This study was conducted to investigate the effects of increased dietary ZnO on the bacterial core and enterobacterial composition in the small intestine of piglets that were fed diets containing a total of 124 or 3,042 mg of Zn per kilogram of diet, respectively. Zinc was supplemented to the basal diet as ZnO. Bacterial 16S rRNA genes of ileal DNA extracts were PCR-amplified with 2 bar-coded p...

Subdominant contributions to the entanglement entropy of quantum fields include logarithmic corrections area law characterized by universal coefficients that are independent ultraviolet regulator and capture detailed information on geometry around entangling surface. We determine two for a massive scalar field in static closed universe $\mathbb{R} \times \mathbb{S}^3$ perturbatively verify resu...

Abstract Orthoptera assemblages were sampled between 2012 and 2014 on six grasslands in marginal part of the former Szernye Marsh (Bereg Lowland, Transcarpathia, West Ukraine). 24 species 1306 individuals observed which is about half known from Bereg Lowland. The bulk formed by generalist chortobiont (62.5%), while thamnobionts, connected with tall forb and/or shrubby vegetation, also reach a r...