Microbiology and Immunology

Mannan binfing lectin recognizes sugars residues like mannose encountered in the surface of polysaccharides like the ones presents in the LPS of Gram-negative bacterias. My question is if the lectin pathway will be activating complement in case of finding LPS or will it be the alternative pathway, wich recognizes LPS too.

Does anybody know the best adhesive/protein coat for cell attachment, I'm currently using fibronectin. Thanks

Hello All, I am about to embark on a new project which involves a world of spread plates and colony counting. I was wondering if anyone has experience of using one of those colony counting pens… -Would you recommend it? (or is it a waste of money?) -If you do recommend it what brand is best? (or is there little difference?) -Is there such a pen which can record the count information from multiple plates? (or does it simply add up the total counts?) Any information would be greatly appreciated. Cheers!

Hi all, While medical and hygienic developments have driven down the mortality rates of infectious diseases, pathogenic microorganisms are still a major factor in everyday clinical practice. They are still the most frequent cause of death in Third World countries. Here is a book that is on that provides a clearly focused and richly detailed review of the entire field of medical microbiology; Hope it helps Cheers Loka

Is there a distinct difference between un-early stage of cancers and between unrecoverable disorder stage of the concerned (diseased) organ?

According to my knowledge, all microbes are unicellular! The question is, are they responsive or have very primitive thinking / selective?

Oxygenation is part of the death process and is also part of the life process. But you don't want to overdose on Oxygen, do ya? We take antioxidants for our health which prevent oxidization, the "rusting" of the body. Why do we take them? Is it foolish or does it mean anything? If it means something, then what is the teaching behind it and does it apply to oxygenating water? There is also Ozone, which would kill you if you consumed it directly I believe, many times more powerful as Chlorine as a disinfectant, but they put it in a good deal of water because it dissipates in 20 minutes - - Logic would make you think that it might leave a residue or create a byp…

I am a newbie here and I apologize if this topic has already been covered. I had a question regarding co receptors involved in viral infection. How can one determine if a coreceptors is involved? These coreceptors may not bind to the viral coat and so binding assays will not give a result. Tissue tropism of certain viruses may be due to such co receptors, especially in hepatitis viruses. Can anyone help me?

My dad, age 44, has Sarcoidosis. He's been smoking ever since I can remember, at least 20 years. I know smoking is usually bad for your health even if you don't have Sarcoidosis. What I wanted to get some advice on, is how might the smoking be effecting his Sarcoidosis. Since it's an immune system problem, wouldn't the smoking make it even worse? By the way he is doing fine with his Sarcoidosis. The only problems is he's got some parts on the back of his neck where it's very obvious his immune system is overreacting. Also on his inner thighs, he's had 2 "tumor" like things removed. I'm told they were from his immune system taking all the stuff your body throws awa…

Hi.I'm trying to stain murine eosinophils from cytospin preparations. I'm using Dff-Quik that is a modified version of Wright technique. I've got many problems to obtain a clear preparation of eosinophls, with their red cytoplasmic granules and their multilobulled nucleus because I don't know if I'm washing in excess and my eosinophils get unstained. Please if someone has experience I will aprecciate any help. Thanks

I read an article recently citing a study done using polysaccharide peptide on a rather small amount of patients (less than 30?), yet with a 100% success rate. Sorry, but I'm not really well situated to dig up the details and cite it, but I'll look. I have found a summary page on some of the research done on this compound that I have linked, with lots of interesting little tidbits. Definitely a lot more information than my first report on the subject. Early this year, I tried out another promising compound from this fungus called polysaccharide krestin, which I initially believed would be superior, based on a preliminary review written by MD Anderson, yet without a…

Precursor T-cells undergo positive and negative selection in the thymus. Negative selection eliminates T-cells that bind strongly to self antigens (e.g. produced by the AIRE gene). However, how is it ensured that only SELF antigens are tested for during negative selection? Perhaps some virus antigen has invaded the thymus and all T-cells that strongly bind with it are also eliminated. This would result in no T-cells being released against that virus, and hence no immunity against it! How easy is it for a virus to invade the thymus, and how can the purity of self antigens be maintained if it happens - so as to ensure that only self and nothing but self antigens are…

I seem to do pretty good at biology and so I decided to go into microbiology, since I didn't turn out to be very good at nursing. I really will only be happy being a microbiologist if I were working in a field that directly alleviates human suffering, so I came to the conclusion that I should specialize in pathogenesis and vaccine development. I like microbiology in general as a hobby, but as a career I would need a specialty that let's me know I've done my part for humanity at the end of each day. Ok, the problem is I really can not see how it would be possible to work in vaccine development and not have to participate in animal testing to some extant. I understa…

Hi All, I'm using flow to measure the size of my cells. I split the cells and get a pellet and resuspend them in a bath solution (140mM NaCl, 2.5mM KCl, 1.2mM CaCl2, 0.5mM MgCl2, 5mM Glucose and 10mM HEPES). However, when I measure the cells in Hypotonic solution (same as before but 75mM NaCl), the cells seem to be decreasing in size rather than increasing. Any ideas?

I was reading the article on Natural Family Planning on Wikipedia just now and I came across this sentence: "In 2003 BBC's Panorama claimed that Vatican is intentionally spreading lies that HIV virus can pass through the membrane of the condom." No other comments are made, so I'm a little confused. I had actually heard a long time ago that latex condoms have naturally occurring holes through which HIV *can* pass (since the purpose of condoms aren't necessarily to prevent disease, but to prevent pregnancy, since sperm *can't* pass through the holes). But given the above statement, I'm unclear now. Can anyone clarify please? Thanks. Edit: I found the transc…

IMAGE 1 IMAGE 2 this is 2 pics of the same tube; i took two to see if one was better quality than the other. i tried to get as best resolution as possible. The media is thioglycollate broth kept at 48 hours in 37degrees celcius. This tube was not shaken prior to taking the picture (mayb i shouldve done that?) is this microorganism anaerobic or facultative anaerobic? My only concern is obviously what the red circle dictates, but i feel like the growth/settlement is too much for anaerobic THANK YOU!!!!

above is what the mannitol salt agar plate for an unknown I must figure out. That's where you all come in; Is this a POSITIVE (colonies surrounded by YELLOW zones) or NEGATIVE (colonies surrounded by PINK/RED zones)???????? For those of you unfamiliar with the test, the original agar's color was light red/dark pink. Given the fact that half is yellow and half is pinkish, I belive that is can still be considered a positive reaction (yellow zones) since some yellow actually appeared. It seems like we streaked it too much, but you guys be the judge... (ps. i kinda want it to be negative (pink) bc the unknown i believe it is has a negative result) thanks

please tell me the scope of microbiology. I am thinking of doing bachelor in microbiology but doub its scope.

Hello there, I wonder if the FIX/PERM solution used during the Intra Cellular staining Could remove or kill red blood cells that could be present in the sample??? Thank you

Hi: Are there any bacteria that feed on nasal mucus? If so, do they produce any colors and odors as a resulting of feeding on the mucus? Thanks, Green Xenon

I was always curious: I read on the blue cheese package that the blue mold is penicillin. Would eating a lot of it have cured people during the black plague? thanx --flk

When does one use culture-medium slants, deeps or broths? My lecturer made no mention of it at all, what so ever and this information is hard to find in any textbooks i own or even on google. Thankyou in advance! (I also cant contact my lecturer.)

I think this type of question may be interesting and a bit elementary to this area of Medical Science . But we are all here to learn in one way or another and people here sound like they like their bacteria , so here goes . Let's say for the purpose of this question that there is a person who regularly urinates on the same 100 lbs of plant soil day after day . Would a point be reached where the different types of bacteria present in the soil just can't cope with the chemicals present ?

TAAs are proteins which are associated with a certain type of malignancy If we give a person a vaccine made of a peptide from a TAA, and it's immunogenic enough, it will activate T cells against this epitope, and we will get activation to CTLs which will kill the tumor cells (which express TAAs). My question is - how do the T cells know to discriminate between self and non self? The TAAs are basically proteins which are expressed in different quantites or in some minor changes in tumor cells compared to normal cells - but is this enough to make sure we don't get an autoimmune response? Thank you!@

Hello everyone, I was trying to stain T cells for memory markers(CD45RA,CCR7) and then I got for some samples 3 populations of CD3+ T cells , Those populations are different in their CD4/CD8 ratio and also in the % of memory subsets Any explanations for those 3 different populations???? Thank you