Over the past decade, it has been demonstrated that cancer is immunogenic, and multiple tumor antigens have been identified in cancer patients. It is now possible to potentially harness the immune response elicited by cancer growth as a potential diagnostic tool. Humoral immunity, or the development of autoantibodies against tumor-associated proteins, may be used as a marker for cancer exposure...

Plant tissue culture is an alternative method of commercial propagation and is being used widely for the commercial propagation of a large number of plant species, including many medicinal plants. Somatic embryogenesis is a process by which asexual or somatic cells are induced to form embryos in culture. Somatic embryogenesis is a multi-step regeneration process starting with formation of pro-e...

Induction of somatic embryogenesis in absence of exogenous auxin can clarify some basic concepts of somatic embryogenesis.  Explants from leaf and petiole of Cucumber (Cucumis sativus) were used in this experiment for somatic embryogenesis using three different modified B5 basal media; boron and 2,4-D but no IAA as control (I), boron and IAA but no 2,4-D (II) and no boron, 2,4-D and IAA (III). ...

Antibody response to carbohydrate antigens is often independent of T cells and the process of affinity/specificity improvement is considered strictly dependent on the germinal centers. Antibodies induced during a T cell-independent type 2 (TI-2) response are less variable and less functionally versatile than those induced with T cell help. The antigen specificity consequences of accumulation of...

Systemic and mucosal antibody responses against both the major subunit of colonization factor antigen I (CFA/I) of enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) and the somatic lipopolysaccharide expressed by recombinant bivalent Salmonella vaccine strains were significantly enhanced by coadministration of a detoxified derivative with preserved adjuvant effects of the ETEC heat-labile toxin, LT((R192...

Four monoclonal antibodies produced by hybridomas obtained from a mouse immunized with a human adenocarcinoma cell line SW1116 (Koprowski, H., Steplewski, Z., Mitchell, K., Herlyn, M., Herlyn, D., and Fuhrer, P. (1979) Somatic Cell Genet. 5, 957-972) are directed against the Leb antigen of the human Lewis blood group system. Their specificities were established by binding studies using purified...

Gluconate-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (GND) is genetically determined in Salmonella typhimurium by a locus (gnd) mapping between the somatic antigen (rfb) and histidine (his) operons. The enzyme is constitutive. Strains of Salmonella carrying an F' genetic element which contains the gnd(+) gene have GND activity two to three times that of the wild type. This gene dosage effect was used to determi...

The thymus hosts the development of a specific type adaptive immune cells called T cells. orchestrate response through recognition antigen by highly variable T-cell receptor (TCR). is tightly coordinated process comprising lineage commitment, somatic recombination Tcr gene loci and selection for functional, but non-self-reactive TCRs, all interspersed with massive proliferation cell death. Thus...

Using recombinant DNA techniques, we reconstructed a genealogical tree (Sablitzky, F., Wildner, G. & Rajewsky, K. (1985) EMBO J. 4, 345-350) that connects three clonally related B cells producing somatically mutated antibodies to a progenitor cell expressing a germ line-encoded antibody. The somatic mutants had been isolated from an in vivo immune response. The germ line-encoded progenitor anti...