Focal adhesion kinase (Fak) has been implicated as a signaling molecule involved in the early response of cardiac myocytes to mechanical stress. The mechanism of Fak activation by mechanical stimuli is not clear. In this study, we report the load-induced Fak activation and its association with myosin heavy chain in cardiac myocytes. Pressure overload lasting from 3 to 60 minutes was shown to in...

The functional roles of the two polypeptide chains that compose the T cell suppressor factor (TsF) that mediates the antigen-specific and genetically restricted suppressor function were studied by using the heavy or light chains isolated from the conventional TsF or the 11S and 13S mRNA translation products of TsF. Either the heavy or the light chain of mRNA translation products reconstitutes t...

For the expression of human intact IgG antibodies, we have constructed a set of baculovirus expression vectors designed to facilitate rapid insertion of heavy and light chain genes of Fab or scFv antibodies derived from phage display antibody libraries. By linking them to human constant or Fc regions, expression of complete human immunoglobulin molecules was achieved in insect cells by infectio...

A unique four-way ligation strategy was developed for rapid construction of a full-length antibody library. A mammalian expression vector was constructed that contained dual mammalian expression cassettes and sequences recognized by the unique restriction enzymes BsmBI, BstXI, and SfiI. Both full-length light-chain and variable domain of heavy-chain genes were inserted into the vector in one st...

A semisynthetic antibody library composed of single chain Fv fragments (scFv) was constructed by replacing the heavy chain CDR3 region of a human scFv by a random sequence of eight amino acids using trinucleotide codons. After cloning into a phage display vector, an antibody library was generated with a complexity of 8 x 10(8) independent clones. The library was screened for binders to dinitrop...

Antibody fragments, comprising paired heavy (VH) and light (VL) chain variable domains, can be displayed on the surface of filamentous bacteriophage, and rare phage (encoding antigen binding activities) selected by binding to antigen (1). The process mimics immune selection and has been used to make human antibody fragments in bacteria, without immunisation, by random combinatorial linkage (2) ...

A rapid ELISA test for detection, characterization and quantification of human paraproteins was developed. The proposed method is a sandwich ELISA, where the capture antibody is specific for a given heavy chain (gamma, alpha or mu) and the labelled antibody is specific either for kappa or for lambda light chain. Both standard and patient sera are tested with all six possible antibody combinatio...

Human snake bitten poisoning is a serious threat in many tropical and subtropical countries such as Iran. The best acceptable treatment of envenomated humans is antivenoms; however they have a series of economic and medical problems and need more improvements. In this study a combinatorial human immunoglobulin gene library against some of Iranian snakes venoms was constructed. Total RNA prepare...