La salamandre, allégorie du Feu

Peinture à fond quadrilléLa salamandre qui est représentée au Moyen Âge et à la Renaissance ne correspond pas à l’animal réel qui appartient à la famille des batraciens : elle apparaît très souvent comme un reptile, proche du lézard ou du serpent, mais est parfois considérée comme un oiseau ou un quadrupède pourvu d’ailes ! Ce manuscrit est une adaptation de quarante-deux fables du Novus Aesopus d’Alexandre Neckam, reprenant très librement les fables d'Ésope, d'où son nom : Isopet II de Paris . On y trouve la salamandre dans la catégorie des "Bestes qui vivent des éléments : la salamandre est un oiseau qui de feu se nourrit, avec les plumes duquel on fait un tissu que le feu ne peut brûler ni détruire".téléchargeabl

Genotypic resistance of archived and circulating viral strains in the blood of treated HIV-infected individuals

The aim of this study was to evaluate patterns of antiretroviral resistance of HIV-1 in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and in the plasma of patients whose therapeutic regimen is failing. Plasma and PBMC samples were collected from 95 HIV-infected patients undergoing long-term treatment. Genotyping of the reverse transcriptase (RT) and protease genes of HIV-1 was undertaken using the fluorescent dideoxy-terminator method. Comparison of the amino acid sequence of the RT and protease genes in cell-associated variants of HIV-1 with that of the plasma revealed that 62 of the 95 patients' samples tested exhibited different genotypic resistance patterns (discordant samples [DSs]). In 27% of samples, the patterns of resistance detected were concordant in both compartments. In 51% of DSs, the greatest number of mutations was found in plasma; however, in 37% of DSs, greater numbers of mutations were found in PBMC DNA. The HIV mutation patterns detected in plasma do not necessarily reflect those found in the cell-associated compartment. The observation that the cellular compartment may contain an archive of the resistance variant makes this reservoir an interesting substrate for analysis of the "resistance potential" in a given patient