Genomic investigations of unexplained acute hepatitis in children

Since its first identification in Scotland, over 1,000 cases of unexplained paediatric hepatitis in children have been reported worldwide, including 278 cases in the UK1. Here we report an investigation of 38 cases, 66 age-matched immunocompetent controls and 21 immunocompromised comparator participants, using a combination of genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic and immunohistochemical methods. We detected high levels of adeno-associated virus 2 (AAV2) DNA in the liver, blood, plasma or stool from 27 of 28 cases. We found low levels of adenovirus (HAdV) and human herpesvirus 6B (HHV-6B) in 23 of 31 and 16 of 23, respectively, of the cases tested. By contrast, AAV2 was infrequently detected and at low titre in the blood or the liver from control children with HAdV, even when profoundly immunosuppressed. AAV2, HAdV and HHV-6 phylogeny excluded the emergence of novel strains in cases. Histological analyses of explanted livers showed enrichment for T cells and B lineage cells. Proteomic comparison of liver tissue from cases and healthy controls identified increased expression of HLA class 2, immunoglobulin variable regions and complement proteins. HAdV and AAV2 proteins were not detected in the livers. Instead, we identified AAV2 DNA complexes reflecting both HAdV-mediated and HHV-6B-mediated replication. We hypothesize that high levels of abnormal AAV2 replication products aided by HAdV and, in severe cases, HHV-6B may have triggered immune-mediated hepatic disease in genetically and immunologically predisposed children

Multiple quantum well top cells for multijunction concentrator solar cells

International audienceHigh efficiency quantum well GaAs solar cells have been successfully applied in commercial multijunction concentrator cells to increase the absorption in the infrared and provide variability of the absorption edge to optimise energy harvesting. Multiple quantum well (MQW) top cells can further improve the performance of multijunction solar cells since the absorption edge of top and middle subcells can be tuned with the MQWs to maximize the efficiency. Also, our simulations show that photon coupling resulting from the radiative dominance of the MQW top cell can make the multijunction cell less sensitive to variations in the incoming spectrum, thus further improving energy harvesting. New results on the characterisation of a novel MQW top cell will be presented along with electro-and photo-luminescence studies relevant to the photonic coupling. The above text is an abstract of a manuscript initially published in the IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics. View the full manuscript a

Protein folding includes oligomerization - examples from the endoplasmic reticulum and cytosol

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