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“The high degree of specificity displayed by antibodies often results in varying potencies against antigen orthologs, which can affect the efficacy of these molecules in different animal models of disease. We have used a computational design strategy to improve the species cross-reactivity of an antibody-based inhibitor of the cancer-associated serine protease

MT-SP1. In silico predictions were tested in vitro, and the most effective mutation, T98R, was shown to improve antibody affinity for the mouse ortholog of the enzyme 14-fold, resulting in an inhibitor with a K(I) of 340 pM. This improved affinity will be valuable when exploring the role of MT-SP1 in mouse models of cancer, and the strategy

outlined here could be useful in fine-tuning antibody specificity. (C) 2009 AG-014699 research buy Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.”
“Duplications of the long arm of the X chromosome are rare. The infantile phenotype shares some resemblance with the Prader-Willi syndrome, presenting severe psychomotor retardation, facial dysmorphic features with a broad face, a small mouth and a thin pointed nose, hypotonia, urogenital malformation and proneness to infections. We report a boy with an additional Xq27-qter chromosome segment translocated onto the selleck kinase inhibitor short arm of chromosome 3. The karyotype was 46, XY, der(3)t(X; 3)(q27.3; p26.3) mat. This cryptic unbalanced X-autosome translocation resulted in Xq27-qter functional disomy and a deletion 3p26.3. A detailed analysis of the constitutional chromosomal changes in the patient was performed using array-CGH, FISH and PCR. The aim was to characterize the size and the location of the duplication Xq27-qter (8.18 Mb) and of the deletion 3p26.3 (1.05 Mb), to establish phenotype-genotype correlations and to offer genetic counselling. (c) 2012 Elsevier Masson SAS. All

rights reserved.”
“Context: Some cases of congenital hypothyroidism (CH) are associated with a gland of normal size.\n\nObjective: To explore Salubrinal in vitro the cause of organification defect in one child with CH and a eutopic thyroid gland, genetic analyses of TPO, DUOX2, and DUOXA2 genes were performed.\n\nPatient: One child with CH, a eutopic thyroid gland, and a partial organification defect was shown after (123)I scintigraphy and perchlorate test.\n\nMethods: In the child with the organification defect, TPO, DUOX2, and DUOXA2 genes were analyzed. The functional activity of the DUOX2 mutants was studied after expression in eukaryotic cells.\n\nResults: No TPO or DUOXA2 gene mutations were identified. Direct sequencing of the DUOX2 gene revealed a compound heterozygous genotype for S911L and C1052Y substitutions. S911L and C1052Y caused a partial defect in H(2)O(2) production after transient expression in HeLa cells.\n\nConclusions: We performed a genetic analysis in one child with CH and a eutopic thyroid gland.