A central paradigm of immunology is clonal selection: lymphocytes displaying clonally distributed antigen receptors are generated and subsequently selected by antigen for growth or elimination. Here we show that in mice transgenic for anti-H-2Kk,b antibody genes, in which a homogeneous clone of developing B cells can be analyzed for the outcome of autoantigen encounter, surface immunoglobulin M...

The endothelial blood-brain barrier (BBB) has a critical role in controlling lymphocyte traffic into the central nervous system (CNS), both in physiological immunosurveillance, and in its pathological aberrations. The intercellular signals that possibly could induce lymphocytes to cross the BBB include immunogenic presentation of protein (auto-)antigens by BBB endothelia to circulating T lympho...

Twenty-three unilaterally adrenalectomized guinea pigs were injected with autologous and homologous adrenal tissue homogenates respectively, in Freund's adjuvant. Widespread adrenal lesions were found in 10 of 12 animals receiving auto-antigen and to a lesser extent in 6 of 11 animals injected with homologous pooled antigen. Widespread systemic lesions were present in both these and in control ...

It has long been known that the serum of certain leprosy patients gives positive reactions with tests for syphilis. These reactions have not been understood and have been interpreted as biologic ‘(false positives.” The reason for this interpretation undoubtedly lies in the widespread assumption that only in syphilis and in closely related diseases, such as yaws and bejel, are serum reactions wi...

Investigation of MHC class I endogenous antigen processing and presentation is important for understanding non-self immune recognition, vaccine design, immune evasion by pathogens and tumours, and elucidation of the mechanisms of certain auto-immune diseases. To study the MHC class I antigen-processing pathway, the protein antigen of interest has to be expressed inside the cells. To express a d...

The role of infectious agents in autoimmune diseases genesis is still a matter of debate. Several observations have suggested that autoimmune diseases may be initiated or worsened by infections (review by Kivity et al., 2009). However, there is no clear understanding of the underlying mechanisms. In particular, autoantibody production during infections could be the result of the non specific ac...

To automatically annotate songs with descriptive keywords, a variety of content-based auto-tagging strategies have been proposed in recent years. Different approaches may capture different aspects of a song’s musical content, such as timbre, temporal dynamics, rhythmic qualities, etc. As a result, some auto-taggers may be better suited to model the acoustic characteristics commonly associated w...