Boston Children's Hospital

About: Boston Children's Hospital is a healthcare organization based out in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Medicine. The organization has 165409 authors who have published 215589 publications receiving 6885627 citations.

Blue silver: A very sensitive colloidal Coomassie G‐250 staining for proteome analysis

Abstract: A modified Neuhoff's colloidal Coomassie Blue G-250 stain is reported, dubbed "blue silver" on account of its considerably higher sensitivity, approaching the one of conventional silver staining. The main modifications, as compared to Neuhoff's protocol, were: a 20% increment in dye concentration (from 0.1% up to 0.12%) and a much higher level of phosphoric acid in the recipe (from 2% up to 10%). The "blue silver" exhibits a much faster dye uptake (80% during the first hour of coloration, vs. none with a commercial preparation from Sigma). Even at equilibrium (24 h staining), the "blue silver" exhibits a much higher sensitivity than all other recipes, approaching (but lower than) the one of the classical silver stain. Measurements of stain sensitivity after sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) of bovine serum albumin (BSA) gave a detection limit (signal-to-noise ratio > 3) of 1 ng in a single zone. The somewhat lower sensitivity of "blue silver" as compared to classical silvering protocols in the presence of aldehydes is amply compensated for by its full compatibility with mass spectrometry of eluted polypeptide chains, after a two-dimensional map analysis, thus confirming that no dye is covalently bound (or permanently modifies) to any residue in the proteinaceous material. It is believed that the higher level of phosphoric acid in the recipe, thus its lower final pH, helps in protonating the last dissociated residues of Asp and Glu in the polypeptide coils, thus greatly favoring ionic anchoring of dye molecules to the protein moiety. Such a binding, though, must be followed by considerable hydrophobic association with the aromatic and hydrophobic residues along the polypeptide backbone.

Schizophrenia risk from complex variation of complement component 4

Abstract: Schizophrenia is a heritable brain illness with unknown pathogenic mechanisms. Schizophrenia's strongest genetic association at a population level involves variation in the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) locus, but the genes and molecular mechanisms accounting for this have been challenging to identify. Here we show that this association arises in part from many structurally diverse alleles of the complement component 4 (C4) genes. We found that these alleles generated widely varying levels of C4A and C4B expression in the brain, with each common C4 allele associating with schizophrenia in proportion to its tendency to generate greater expression of C4A. Human C4 protein localized to neuronal synapses, dendrites, axons, and cell bodies. In mice, C4 mediated synapse elimination during postnatal development. These results implicate excessive complement activity in the development of schizophrenia and may help explain the reduced numbers of synapses in the brains of individuals with schizophrenia.

Monoclonal antibody-mediated tumor regression by induction of apoptosis

Abstract: To characterize cell surface molecules involved in control of growth of malignant lymphocytes, monoclonal antibodies were raised against the human B lymphoblast cell line SKW6.4. One monoclonal antibody, anti-APO-1, reacted with a 52-kilodalton antigen (APO-1) on a set of activated human lymphocytes, on malignant human lymphocyte lines, and on some patient-derived leukemic cells. Nanogram quantities of anti-APO-1 completely blocked proliferation of cells bearing APO-1 in vitro in a manner characteristic of a process called programmed cell death or apoptosis. Cell death was preceded by changes in cell morphology and fragmentation of DNA. This process was distinct from antibody- and complement-dependent cell lysis and was mediated by the antibody alone. A single intravenous injection of anti-APO-1 into nu/nu mice carrying a xenotransplant of a human B cell tumor induced regression of this tumor within a few days. Histological thin sections of the regressing tumor showed that anti-APO-1 was able to induce apoptosis in vivo. Thus, induction of apoptosis as a consequence of a signal mediated through cell surface molecules like APO-1 may be a useful therapeutic approach in treatment of malignancy.