The nontoxic B subunit of cholera toxin (CTB) can significantly increase the ability of proteins to induce immunological tolerance after oral administration, when it was conjugated to various proteins. Recombinant CTB offers great potential for treatment of autoimmune disease. Here we firstly investigated the feasibility of silkworm baculovirus expression vector system for the cost-effective pr...

When covalently bound to an appropriate ligand, iron oxide nanoparticles can bind to a specific target of interest. This interaction can be detected through changes in the solution's spin-spin relaxation times (T2) via magnetic relaxation measurements. In this report, a strategy of molecular mimicry was used in order to identify targeting ligands that bind to the cholera toxin B subunit (CTB). ...

The heterologous surface expression of the cholera toxin B subunit (CTB) from Vibro cholerae in two staphylococcal species, Staphylococcus xylosus and Staphylococcus carnosus, has been investigated. The gene encoding native CTB (103 amino acids) was introduced into gene constructs encoding chimeric receptors designed to be translocated and anchored on the outer cell surface of the staphylococci...

Axonal retrograde transport of signalling endosomes from the nerve terminal to the soma underpins survival. As each signalling endosome carries a quantal amount of activated receptors, we hypothesized that it is the frequency of endosomes reaching the soma that determines the scale of the trophic signal. Here we show that upregulating synaptic activity markedly increased the flux of plasma memb...

Caveolae appear to function in vesicular trafficking of specific molecular cargo into and across vascular endothelial and other cells. They contain the molecular machinery for docking and fusion, similar to other vesicular trafficking systems, yet the mechanisms mediating ligand internalization and targeted intracellular transport by caveolae remain unclear. Using immunoelectron microscopy, we ...

We have examined a cerebello-thalamo-striatal pathway from the lateral cerebellar nucleus (LCN) to the laterodorsal part of the striatum (LDS) through the central lateral nucleus (CL) using light and electron microscopy through the employment of a combination of anterograde and retrograde tracing techniques. Biotinylated dextran amine (BDA) was injected into the unilateral LCN, and used as an a...

A DNA construct encoding cholera toxin B subunit (CTB) and an anti-diabetic peptide from human heat shock protein 60 (hsp60) as a fusion protein was produced and transferred into low-nicotine tobacco through Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. Integration of the fusion gene into the plant genome was confirmed by PCR. The transcriptional expression of the fusion gene was demonstrated by RTPCR...

Capable of inducing antigen-specific immune responses in both systemic and mucosal compartments without the use of syringe and needle, mucosal vaccination is considered ideal for the global control of infectious diseases. In this study, we developed a rice-based oral vaccine expressing cholera toxin B subunit (CTB) under the control of the endosperm-specific expression promoter 2.3-kb glutelin ...

The cholera toxin B (CTB) subunit has been used extensively in vaccine research as a carrier for peptide immunogens due to its immunopotentiating properties, where coupling has been obtained either by genetic fusion or chemical conjugation. For genetically fused immunogens both N- and C-terminal fusions have been used. Only shorter extensions have previously been evaluated and in some reports t...

Fibronectin binding protein F1 (Sfb1) of Streptococcus pyogenes (group A streptococcus [GAS]) is a well-characterized adhesin that has been shown to induce protection in mice against a lethal intranasal GAS challenge after intranasal immunization with cholera toxin B subunit (CTB) as adjuvant. With a murine skin infection model, we have shown that Sfb1/CTB vaccination neither elicits opsonizing...