Identification of a Putative Crf Splice Variant and Generation of Recombinant Antibodies for the Specific Detection of Aspergillus fumigatus

BACKGROUND: Aspergillus fumigatus is a common airborne fungal pathogen for humans. It frequently causes an invasive aspergillosis (IA) in immunocompromised patients with poor prognosis. Potent antifungal drugs are very expensive and cause serious adverse effects. Their correct application requires an early and specific diagnosis of IA, which is still not properly achievable. This work aims to a specific detection of A. fumigatus by immunofluorescence and the generation of recombinant antibodies for the detection of A. fumigatus by ELISA. RESULTS: The A. fumigatus antigen Crf2 was isolated from a human patient with proven IA. It is a novel variant of a group of surface proteins (Crf1, Asp f9, Asp f16) which belong to the glycosylhydrolase family. Single chain fragment variables (scFvs) were obtained by phage display from a human naive antibody gene library and an immune antibody gene library generated from a macaque immunized with recombinant Crf2. Two different selection strategies were performed and shown to influence the selection of scFvs recognizing the Crf2 antigen in its native conformation. Using these antibodies, Crf2 was localized in growing hyphae of A. fumigatus but not in spores. In addition, the antibodies allowed differentiation between A. fumigatus and related Aspergillus species or Candida albicans by immunofluorescence microscopy. The scFv antibody clones were further characterized for their affinity, the nature of their epitope, their serum stability and their detection limit of Crf2 in human serum. CONCLUSION: Crf2 and the corresponding recombinant antibodies offer a novel approach for the early diagnostics of IA caused by A. fumigatus

On subgroup discovery in numerical domains

Subgroup discovery is a Knowledge Discovery task that aims at finding subgroups of a population with high generality and distributional unusualness. While several subgroup discovery algorithms have been presented in the past, they focus on databases with nominal attributes or make use of discretization to get rid of the numerical attributes. In this paper, we illustrate why the replacement of numerical attributes by nominal attributes can result in suboptimal results. Thereafter, we present a new subgroup discovery algorithm that prunes large parts of the search space by exploiting bounds between related numerical subgroup descriptions. The same algorithm can also be applied to ordinal attributes. In an experimental section, we show that the use of our new pruning scheme results in a huge performance gain when more that just a few split-points are considered for the numerical attributes

Casa Unilever, en Hamburgo – Alemania

The shape of the planform of this building corresponds closely to its basic functions. As regards the internal distribution, the basements contain undergroimd carparks; the groundfloor has the hall, waiting room, teletypes and services; the first four storeys house a cafeteria, dining rooms, kitchens and administration services, also the calculation centre. The top floors are entirely devoted to office space. Both the siting and the general aspect of the building, externally and inside are notable and outstanding.La «forma» que adopta en planta el edificio responde adecuadamente a las funciones que en el mismo se desarrollan. Por lo que respecta a la distribución: las plantas de sótano contienen los aparcamientos subterráneos. La planta baja: el hall; salas de espera; de teletipos; etc. Las cuatro primeras plantas comprenden: la cafetería; comedores; cocinas; servicios de administración del edificio. El Centro de cálculo se encuentra en la tercera planta. La cuarta planta alberga las instalaciones. En las demás plantas se distribuyen las oficinas. Tanto el emplazamiento, como el tratamiento exterior e interior de este edificio, lo distinguen como algo notable y singular