Hydrogeochemical data on groundwater quality with special emphasis on fluoride enrichment in Munneru river basin (MRB), Telangana State, South India

Fluorosis is one of the most prevailing groundwater related disease in developing countries like India and China. In India, 20 out of 29 states have some extent of groundwater fluoride contamination. In especially, Telangana State all (10 out of 10) districts are fluoride affected (Adimalla and Venkatayogi, 2017) [2]. However, this article describes about fluoride contamination and correlation between fluoride and other hydrochemical parameters, in the Munneru river basin (MRB) groundwater, Telangana State, South India. The fluoride concentration in groundwater of Munneru river basin ranged from 0.3 to 8.0 mg/L, with a mean of 1.607 mg/L. About 35% of the groundwater samples have fluoride concentration above > 1.5 mg/L which are unsuitable for drinking purposes. However, 53% of groundwater locations are within the acceptable limits (0.5–1.5 mg/L) and these are very suitable for drinking purposes and remaining 22% of collected groundwater samples were having less than the required limit of 0.5 mg/L

A single, improbable B cell receptor mutation confers potent neutralization against cytomegalovirus.

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is a leading cause of infant hearing loss and neurodevelopmental delay, but there are no clinically licensed vaccines to prevent infection, in part due to challenges eliciting neutralizing antibodies. One of the most well-studied targets for CMV vaccines is the viral fusogen glycoprotein B (gB), which is required for viral entry into host cells. Within gB, antigenic domain 2 site 1 (AD-2S1) is a target of potently neutralizing antibodies, but gB-based candidate vaccines have yet to elicit robust responses against this region. We mapped the genealogy of B cells encoding potently neutralizing anti-gB AD-2S1 antibodies from their inferred unmutated common ancestor (UCA) and characterized the binding and function of early lineage ancestors. Surprisingly, we found that a single amino acid heavy chain mutation A33N, which was an improbable mutation rarely generated by somatic hypermutation machinery, conferred broad CMV neutralization to the non-neutralizing UCA antibody. Structural studies revealed that this mutation mediated key contacts with the gB AD-2S1 epitope. Collectively, these results provide insight into potently neutralizing gB-directed antibody evolution in a single donor and lay a foundation for using this B cell-lineage directed approach for the design of next-generation CMV vaccines

Germline-targeting HIV-1 Env vaccination induces VRC01-class antibodies with rare insertions

Targeting germline (gl-) precursors of broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) is acknowledged as an important strategy for HIV-1 vaccines. The VRC01-class of bNAbs is attractive because of its distinct genetic signature. However, VRC01-class bNAbs often require extensive somatic hypermutation, including rare insertions and deletions. We describe a BG505 SOSIP trimer, termed GT1.2, to optimize binding to gl-CH31, the unmutated common precursor of the CH30-34 bNAb lineage that acquired a large CDRH1 insertion. The GT1.2 trimer activates gl-CH31 naive B cells in knock-in mice, and B cell responses could be matured by selected boosting immunogens to generate cross-reactive Ab responses. Next-generation B cell sequencing reveals selection for VRC01-class mutations, including insertions in CDRH1 and FWR3 at positions identical to VRC01-class bNAbs, as well as CDRL1 deletions and/or glycine substitutions to accommodate the N276 glycan. These results provide proof of concept for vaccine-induced affinity maturation of B cell lineages that require rare insertions and deletions.</p