Proteomics integrated with Escherichia coli vector-based vaccines and antigen microarrays reveals the immunogenicity of a surface sialidase-like protein of Propionibacterium acnes

Proteomics is a powerful tool for the identification of proteins, which provides a basis for rational vaccine design. However, it is still a highly technical and time‐consuming task to examine a protein's immunogenicity utilizing traditional approaches. Here, we present a platform for effectively evaluating protein immunogenicity and antibody detection. A tetanus toxin C fragment (Tet‐c) was used as a representative antigen to establish this platform. A cell wall‐anchoring sialidase‐like protein (SLP) of Propionibacterium acnes was utilized to assess the efficacy of this platform. We constructed an Escherichia coli vector‐based vaccine by overexpressing Tet‐c or SLP in E. coli and utilized an intact particle of E. coli itself as a vaccine (E. coli Tet‐c or SLP vector). After ultraviolet (UV) irradiation, the E. coli vector‐based vaccines were administered intranasally into imprinting control region mice without adding exogenous adjuvants. For antibody detection, we fabricated antigen microarrays by printing with purified recombinant proteins including Tet‐c and SLP. Our results demonstrated that detectable antibodies were elicited in mice 6 weeks after intranasal administration of UV‐irradiated E. coli vector‐based vaccines. The antibody production of Tet‐c and SLP was significantly elevated after boosting. Notably, the platform with main benefits of using E. coli itself as a vaccine carrier provides a critical template for applied proteomics aimed at screening novel vaccine targets. In addition, the novel immunogenic SLP potentially serves as an antigen candidate for the development of vaccines targeting P. acnes‐associated diseases.     

Overexpression and elevated plasma level of tumor-associated antigen 90K/Mac-2 binding protein in colorectal carcinoma

The cancer cell secretome may contain potentially useful biomarkers. Previously, we have analyzed the colorectal carcinoma (CRC) cell secretome. In this study, tumor‐associated antigen 90K (TAA90K)/Mac‐2 binding protein (Mac‐2BP), one of the CRC cell secreted proteins, was chosen for evaluation as a potential CRC biomarker because its mRNA level was also found to be significantly elevated in CRC tissues and in a more metastatic CRC cell line from the analysis of two public domain array‐based datasets. Immunohistochemical analysis of 241 CRC specimens showed that TAA90K/Mac‐2BP was positively detected in 52.7% of the tumors, but weakly or not detected in over 95% of the adjacent nontumor epithelial cells. The plasma TAA90K/Mac‐2BP levels were significantly higher in CRC patients (N = 280) versus healthy controls (N = 147) (7.77 ± 3.49 vs. 5.72 ± 2.67 μg/mL, p<0.001). Moreover, combination of TAA90K/Mac‐2BP and carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) could outperform CEA alone in discriminating CRC patients from healthy persons in this case‐control study. Our results collectively indicate that analysis of cancer cell secretome is a feasible strategy for identifying cancer biomarker candidates, and the TAA90K/Mac‐2BP may be a potential CRC biomarker.     

LSS: an S-Plus/R program for the accelerated failure time model to right censored data based on least-squares principle

Due to lack of proper inference procedure and software, the ordinary linear regression model is seldom used in practice for the analysis of right censored data. This paper presents an S-Plus/R program that implements a recently developed inference procedure [Z. Jin, D.Y. Lin, Z. Ying, On least-squares regression with censored data, Biometrika 93 (2006) 147-161] for the accelerated failure time model based on the least-squares principle. The program is user-friendly and yields outputs similar to S-Plus/R function 1m.     

Development of a web-based system for engineering change management

Engineering changes (ECs) are changes and/or modifications in forms, fits, functions, materials, dimensions, etc., of products and constituent components. ECs usually induce a series of downstream changes. Multiple disciplines and responsibilities are therefore involved in managing ECs. Previous investigations conducted by the authors and other researchers have shown that paper-based and standalone computerised EC management (ECM) systems have limited support for such intensive teamwork and close communication. This paper proposes to establish a web-based framework that supports ECM procedures and activities. A web-based ECM system is able to provide better information sharing, simultaneous data access and processing and more prompt communication and feedback. The amount of paperwork and the throughput time of managing ECs are significantly reduced while the effectiveness and the efficiency are substantially improved. This paper focuses on discussing the issues of design, development, and implementation of this prototype web-based ECM system.     

A model-based hand gesture recognition system

This paper introduces a model-based hand gesture recognition system, which consists of three phases: feature extraction, training, and recognition. In the feature extraction phase, a hybrid technique combines the spatial (edge) and the temporal (motion) information of each frame to extract the feature images. Then, in the training phase, we use the principal component analysis (PCA) to characterize spatial shape variations and the hidden Markov models (HMM) to describe the temporal shape variations. A modified Hausdorff distance measurement is also applied to measure the similarity between the feature images and the pre-stored PCA models. The similarity measures are referred to as the possible observations for each frame. Finally, in recognition phase, with the pre-trained PCA models and HMM, we can generate the observation patterns from the input sequences, and then apply the Viterbi algorithm to identify the gesture. In the experiments, we prove that our method can recognize 18 different continuous gestures effectively. Received: 19 May 1999 / Accepted: 4 September 2000     

一种通用的数据类型——十进制浮点数

为智能仪表提供一种“十进制浮点数”,其特点是值域宽、值准确,它能代替整、长整型、三字节浮点数、四字节浮点数、BCD码数。用它通信可简化和统一仪表的通信协议,为制定仪表通用通信协议标准创造条件。     

基于Softbase的Web Server分析与设计

分析了Web Server的一般结构及功能特点,设计了一种基于Softbase安全数据库系统的Web Server。     

基于Linux的文件系统对连续媒体的支持

从操作系统角度考虑了底层文件系统对连续媒体的支持,并详细介绍了Linux下设计和实现的BLOB(Binary Large Obiject)文件系统的设计思想及其实现技术细节,并讨论它对连续媒体的支持情况。     

基于软件芯片的快速原型制造系统软件设计方法

本文把软件芯片的概念引入快速原型制造（RPM）系统的软件设计之中,根据RPM系统软件结构的特点,对其进行了软件芯片划分,并论述了每个软件芯片的功能。以数控语言解释器软件芯片为例,详细地介绍了RPM系统软件芯片的研制过程。研究了如何用软件芯片构造RPM系统软件。     

多Agent系统DOLTRI—Agent中的通信及其安全机制

本文介绍了一个基于Internet的信息检索多Agent系统DOLTRI－Agent内多个Agent间的通信框架及其安全机制。主要论述各个Agent间相互通信所采用的通信语言,通信协议以及信息交换和相互合作的方法,在此基础上提出了一种多Agent系统安全通信模型。