Simultaneous multianalysis for tumor markers by antibody fragments microarray system

It is often necessary to measure a spectrum of tumor markers in oncology. We have developed a simultaneous multiplexing immunoassay method to determine six tumor markers: -fetoprotein (AFP), carcinoma embryonic antigen (CEA), beta-human chorionic gonadotropin (β-HCG), carbohydrate antigen 125 (CA 125), carbohydrate antigen 19-9 (CA 19-9) and carbohydrate antigen 15-3 (CA 15-3). F(ab′)₂ fragments of six capture antibodies were prepared and printed as microarrays on silylated slides to perform sandwich immunoassays with the use of an avidin–biotin system for amplified fluorescence signals. Each antigen with different concentrations was detected to assemble its calibration curve, and combinations of different markers were determined to examine the specificity of simultaneous detection based on the F(ab′)₂ microarrays. Some clinical samples were analyzed to compare with results obtained with the use of immunoradiometric assay (IRMA) method. Wide range calibration curve and its R-value were obtained for each analyte. Calibration curves concentrations were 0–640 μg/l for CEA, AFP and β-HCG, and 0–1280 kU/l for CA 125, CA 19-9 and CA 15-3. The antibody fragments microarray system bears comparison with conventional immunoassays and may find feasible application in measurement of series markers in oncology and other areas of medicine.     

CaO固硫过程中Ca~(2+)在CaSO_4产物层内扩散的研究

应用标记实验技术 ,研究CaO固硫反应过程中产物层扩散控制阶段的反应机理 .利用扫描电镜和反射式光学显微镜 ,对压制烧结并带有Pt标记的CaO样品在固硫反应前后的形貌变化观察 ,结果表明 :经过较长时间的固硫反应后 ,在Pt标记层外表面形成一层覆盖物 ,XRD分析结果证明该覆盖物是CaSO4.利用电化学综合测试仪测量了CaO及CaSO4在高温下的电导率 ,结果表明在 10 0 0℃时CaSO4的电导率达到了 10 -3 数量级 ,说明在高温下CaSO4内Ca2 + 有较高的离子迁移特性 .根据标记实验、电导率测试的结果和CaO掺杂体系的固硫动力学数据的分析认为 :CaO固硫反应在后期的扩散层控制阶段的主要反应是Ca2 + 通过CaSO4产物层扩散至CaSO4外表面与SO2 和O2 进行反应 ,生成CaSO4,而不是SO2 和O2 气体通过CaSO4产物层向内扩散 ,在颗粒内部与CaO发生固硫反应 .     

微孔板化学发光酶免疫分析法分析人血清中游离前列腺特异性抗原

建立了一种定量分析人血清中游离前列腺特异性抗原(f-PSA)的高灵敏度微孔板化学发光酶免疫分析方法,以碱性磷酸酶(alkaline phosphatase,ALP)为标记酶,4-甲氧基-4-(3″-磷酰氧基苯)-螺旋-(1,2-二氧杂环丁烷-3,2′-金刚烷)(4-methoxy-4-(3″-phosphate-phenyl)-spiro-(1,2-dioxetane-3,2′-adamantane),AMPPD)-ALP高灵敏的化学发光反应为检测体系,通过检测发光强度对人血清中f-PSA进行定量。对几种物理化学参数如温育时间、免疫反应步骤以及检测时间等进行了优化,采用了一步双抗体夹心法,37℃恒温静置温育2h,洗涤后加入50μL AMPPD,30~80min内检测。该方法线性范围为0.15~20μg/L,相关系数大于0.998;检出限可达0.01μg/L,批内和批间相对标准偏差(C.V.)均小于7%;回收率在88%~108%之间。对人体血清中共存的6种常见肿瘤标志物CA50、CA125、CA15-3、CA242、CEA和AFP的偶联反应进行考察,特异性良好。为了验证该方法用于商业试剂盒的可行性,在4℃和37℃条件下分别进行了3d,5d,7d的稳定性考察,其线性相关系数仍均大于0.998,相对标准偏差小于6%。对98例实际血样进行测定,并与进口试剂盒(Monobind.USA)作临床比对,相关性良好。这些结果均表明,该分析体系稳定,可靠,可以用于商业化试剂盒的开发,在临床分析人血清中f-PSA的辅助诊断前列腺癌方面具有很高的应用价值。     

Real-time automatic registration in optical surgical navigation

An image-guided surgical navigation system requires the improvement of the patient-to-image registration time to enhance the convenience of the registration procedure. A critical step in achieving this aim is performing a fully automatic patient-to-image registration. This study reports on a design of custom fiducial markers and the performance of a real-time automatic patient-to-image registration method using these markers on the basis of an optical tracking system for rigid anatomy. The custom fiducial markers are designed to be automatically localized in both patient and image spaces. An automatic localization method is performed by registering a point cloud sampled from the three dimensional (3D) pedestal model surface of a fiducial marker to each pedestal of fiducial markers searched in image space. A head phantom is constructed to estimate the performance of the real-time automatic registration method under four fiducial configurations. The head phantom experimental results demonstrate that the real-time automatic registration method is more convenient, rapid, and accurate than the manual method. The time required for each registration is approximately 0.1 s. The automatic localization method precisely localizes the fiducial markers in image space. The averaged target registration error for the four configurations is approximately 0.7 mm. The automatic registration performance is independent of the positions relative to the tracking system and the movement of the patient during the operation.     

In-depth analysis on thermal phase transition mechanism of main-chain phosphorus-containing thermotropic liquid crystal copolyester

In order to surmount drawbacks of the infrared spectroscopy (IR) itself during investigating the mesophase-transition behaviours and mechanism of the thermotropic liquid crystalline polymers (TLCPs), the elemental phosphorus as an internal marker was introduced into the main-chain TLCPs. The detail mechanism of the glass transition and mesophase phase transition of the phosphorus-containing aromatic liquid crystalline copolyester (poly(-hydroxybenzate-co-DOPO-benzenediol dihydrodiphenyl ether terephthalate) [PHDDT]) was revealed through tracing the internal marker with the perturbation correlation moving window 2-dimensional correlation and 2-dimensional correlation analysis (2DCOS) correlation IR spectra. The results showed that the phosphorus-containing unit did not participate in the glass transition of the PHDDT. The results of the 2DCOS showed that the PHDDT mesophase phase transition took place through adjustment of the phosphorus-containing units. Simultaneously, the adjustment of the phosphorus-containing unit also can induce the motion of the other groups, and the sequential orders of the spectral changes were Ar–O–Ar → ester C–O → C=O. However, the sequential orders of the spectral changes were converse during the PHDDT glass transition.     

Conformational dependence of tag induced intramolecular STM contrast in hexaphenylbenzene molecules

Chemically tagged hexaphenylbenzene molecules physisorbed on Au(1 1 1) surface display their tag differently under STM as compared to their physisorption on a Cu(1 1 1) surface. Our STM findings complemented by First Principles and Quantum Chemistry calculations have attributed this difference to two different conformations adopted by these molecules on Au(1 1 1) in comparison to its one conformation on Cu(1 1 1). The demonstration of the sensitivity of the tag to its electronic or chemical environment would have important implications in designing single molecule machinery where the motion of the molecule is to be discerned by tracking its tag induced intramolecular STM contrast.     

A highly sensitive label-free resonance light scattering assay of carcinoembryonic antigen based on immune complexes

As a kind of glycoprotein, carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) is the important tumor marker for clinical diagnosis of the presence or recurrence of cancer. In this work, a novel label-free resonance light scattering (RLS) spectral CEA assay was developed based on the combination of highly selective immunoreaction and ultrasensitive RLS technique. In Tris–HCl buffer solution (pH 7.5), the specific immunoreaction between CEA antigen and mouse anti-CEA formed immune complexes which had a maximum RLS spectral peak at 389.0 nm, with the existence of physiological saline and polyethylene glycol 20,000 (PEG 20,000). Under the optimal conditions, the magnitude of enhanced RLS intensity (ΔI_RLS) was proportional to the concentration of CEA in the range from 0.1 to 60 ng mL⁻¹, with a detection limit (LOD, 3σ) of 0.03 ng mL⁻¹. The characteristics of RLS, the CEA immunocomplex, the immune response, the ratio of CEA antigen and mouse anti-CEA, and the optimum conditions of the immunoreaction have been investigated. The CEA concentrations of 20 serum specimens detected by the developed assay showed consistent results in comparison with those obtained by commercially available enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kit. And this method has many satisfying merits including label-free, sensitivity and high selectivity.     

A marker‐and‐cell approach to free surface 2‐D multiphase flows

This work describes a methodology to simulate free surface incompressible multiphase flows. This novel methodology allows the simulation of multiphase flows with an arbitrary number of phases, each of them having different densities and viscosities. Surface and interfacial tension effects are also included. The numerical technique is based on the GENSMAC front‐tracking method. The velocity field is computed using a finite‐difference discretization of a modification of the Navier–Stokes equations. These equations together with the continuity equation are solved for the two‐dimensional multiphase flows, with different densities and viscosities in the different phases. The governing equations are solved on a regular Eulerian grid, and a Lagrangian mesh is employed to track free surfaces and interfaces. The method is validated by comparing numerical with analytic results for a number of simple problems; it was also employed to simulate complex problems for which no analytic solutions are available. The method presented in this paper has been shown to be robust and computationally efficient. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Considering the flanking region variants of nonbinary SNP and phenotype-informative SNP to constitute 30 microhaplotype loci for increasing the discriminative ability of forensic applications

The flanking region variants of nonbinary SNPs and phenotype-informative SNPs (piSNPs) have been observed, which may greatly improve the discriminative ability after constituting microhaplotype. In this study, 30 microhaplotype loci based on the nonbinary SNPs and piSNPs (shown to be related to phenotypes such as hair and eye color) were selected. Genotyping were conducted on 100 unrelated northern Han Chinese, and the 26 populations from the 1000 Genome Project were also included for comparison of populations differentiation. The simulated study was conducted for evaluating the efficiency of kinship testing. These 30 microhaplotype loci we selected had good polymorphism, with a mean effective number of alleles (Ae) of 3.46. The average Ae increase was 1.27 compared with the target SNPs. The populations from the five regions worldwide could also be distinguished using these loci. The results of kinship testing showed that these microhaplotype loci had the similar ability as 15 STR loci of AmpFlSTR^R Identifiler^R PCR Amplification Kit to identify the biological parent and a stronger ability to exclude the nonbiological parents. So, these 30 microhaplotype loci may be multifunctional for forensic application, including the ability of personal identification and kinship testing equivalent to 15 STR loci, and the power of ancestry inference for distinguishing the main intercontinental population. Moreover, our selected phenotypic microhaplotype loci may theoretically have phenotype prediction capabilities. But the phenotype prediction efficiency of these phenotypic microhaplotype loci may be worse than that of piSNPs and the detailed prediction accuracy of different populations needs to be further studied.     

Proteomics as a tool for examining the toxicity of heavy metals

Examining the toxic effects of heavy metals on protein expression can be useful for gaining insight into the biomolecular mechanisms of toxicity and for identifying potential candidate metal-specific protein markers of exposure and response. In this article, we present the state of the art of proteomics in metal-toxicity-related studies. We consider different methods used for sample preparation that depend on the nature of the sample (plants, microorganisms and animals). We also describe different proteomic strategies, both gel-based and gel-free technologies, including two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2-DE) and multi-dimensional protein-identification technology (MudPIT). We critically review the advantages and the disadvantages of such techniques and discuss the main studies carried out so far. We also comment on future applications and potential research interests within this field.