Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0149514 (bronchitis)
 6,902 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

To study the antigenic structure of the peplomer protein of the avian coronavirus infectious bronchitis virus, fragments from the peplomer gene were generated by restriction-enzyme cleavage or by limited DNase digestion and inserted in the Escherichia coli expression plasmid pEX (Stanley and Luzio, 1984). The antigenicity of the expression products was tested using a number of polyclonal antisera and monoclonal antibodies. The polyclonal antisera recognized different sets of epitopes in the 1162-residue sequence. The N-terminal region of one of the two subunits, S2, was recognized by all polyclonal sera and by two monoclonal antibodies. This clearly immunodominant region contains at least two adjacent or overlapping epitopes, one of which has been localized within 18 residues. The epitopes found as antigenic pEX expression products do not coincide with the regions in the S1 subunit that have been found to contain hypervariable sequences. We suggest that these regions constitute conformation dependent neutralization epitopes that cannot be detected in the pEX system. The relevance of our findings for vaccine development is discussed.
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PMID:Antigenicity of the peplomer protein of infectious bronchitis virus. 246 99

Cystic fibrosis, an autosomal recessive disorder, is the most common genetic disease of Caucasians. One in 25 Caucasians are carriers of the gene. The gene is found far less commonly in other races. There are over 230 different alleles of the gene, located on the 7th chromosome. The gene encodes for a membrane protein that functions as an ion channel. The survival of cystic fibrosis patients has been gradually increasing, with a mean survival in 1990 of 28 years. If the current trend of improved survival continues, it is estimated that half of cystic fibrosis patients will be over 18 years old by 1996. Disease is found in many organs including the lungs, sinuses, pancreas, gastrointestinal tract, hepatobiliary system, sweat glands and reproductive tract. The majority of patients die of pulmonary disease. The airways become chronically colonized with bacteria that cannot be eradicated, leading to bronchitis, bronchiectasis, and finally, pulmonary fibrosis with respiratory failure. The pulmonary disease may be complicated by massive hemoptysis and pneumothorax. Patient survival rates have increased because of antibiotic therapy and improved nutrition with pancreatic enzyme replacements. New treatments for the pulmonary disease are under clinical trial and include antiproteases, amiloride, a sodium channel blocker, and DNase. The insertion of the normal cystic fibrosis allele into an animal model using a modified adenovirus with effective transcription suggests that gene therapy may be possible in the future, but safety and technical problems have to be addressed.
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PMID:Cystic fibrosis. 842 40