A strategy for efficient preparation of genus-specific diagnostic antibodies for snakebites

As said by former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, "Snakebite is the most important tropical disease you've never heard of." Listed as a priority neglected tropical disease by the World Health Organization, snakebite envenoming (SBE) kills in excess of 125,000 people per year. However, due to the complexity and overlap of snake venom compositions, few reliable venom diagnostic methods for genus-/species-specific identification, which is crucial for successful SBE therapy, are available. Here, we develop a strategy to select and prepare genus-specific snake venom antibodies, which allows rapid and efficient clinical diagnosis of snakebite. Multi-omics approaches are used to choose candidate antigens from snake venoms and identify genus-specific antigenic epitope peptide fragments (GSAEPs) with ideal immunogenicity, specificity, and spatial accessibility. Double-antibody sandwich ELISA kit was established by matching a polyclonal antibody against a natural antigen and a monoclonal antibody that was prepared by natural protein as antigen and can specifically target the GSAEPs. The kit shows the ability to accurately identify venoms from similar genera of Trimeresurus and Protobothrops with a detection limit of 6.25 ng/ml on the snake venoms and a little cross-reaction, thus proving high feasibility and applicability.Animal science

This Article Corrects: “Trends in Regionalization of Care for ST-Segment Elevation Myocardial Infarction”

The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.5811/westjem.2018.5.3843

High-precision and high-resolution carbonate 230Th dating by MC-ICP-MS with SEM protocols,

International audienceTo facilitate the measurement of U–Th isotopic compositions suitable for high-precision and high-resolution 230Th dating of coral and speleothem carbonates, secondary electron multiplier (SEM) protocol techniques for multicollector inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (MC-ICP-MS) have been developed. The instrumental sensitivities are 1–2%, with a precision of ±1–2‰ (2σ) for abundance determination of 50–200 fg 234U (1–4 ng 238U) or 230Th. This method features chemistry refinements, improvements to procedural and instrumental blanks, spectral inference reductions, and careful consideration of non-linear SEM behavior. Measurement consistency of this MC-ICP-MS combined with previous mass spectrometric results on U–Th standards and a variety of carbonates demonstrates the validity of the SEM protocol method. For fossil corals, a routine U–Th isotopic determination at permil-level precision requires only 10–50 mg of carbonate. As little as 200 mg of young coral with an age of less than 20 yr can be dated with a precision of ±0.3–0.8 yr. About 20–200 mg speleothem samples with sub-ppm-to-ppm U are required to earn a 5‰ precision on ages from 5 to 100 kyr. Requirement of small sample size, 10–100s mg carbonate, can permit high temporal resolution to date speleothems with slow growth rates, i.e., 1–10 mm/kyr. This high-precision 230Th chronology is critical to accurately establish age models, date events and splice geochemical proxy time series records from multiple samples in the fields of paleoclimatology and paleoceanography. The U–Th isotopic determination techniques described here can also be applied to different environmental samples, such as waters, rocks, and sediments