Penetrating Vertebral and Spinal Trauma Complicated by Meningitis in a 2-year-old Child: A Rare Clinical Case.

The selection of a treatment approach for a 2-year-old child with penetrating vertebral and spinal trauma, complicated by meningitis, is presented here. This pathology occurs rather rarely, which complicates the development of a uniform approach for the management of such patients. After surgical treatment of the wound in the lumbar region at L5-S1 level due to trauma, the leakage of a transparent discharge had been observed, the nature of which was unclear; it was considered at this treatment stage to be injury to the right ureter.

Monocyte chemotactic protein-1 receptor CCR2B is a glycoprotein that has tyrosine sulfation in a conserved extracellular N-terminal region.

Monocyte chemotactic protein-1 (MCP-1) binding to its receptor, CCR2B, plays an important role in a variety of diseases involving infection, inflammation, and/or injury. In our effort to understand the molecular basis of this interaction and its biological consequences, we recognized a conserved hexad of amino acids at the N-terminal extracellular domain of several chemokine receptors, including CCR2B. Human embryonic kidney 293 cells expressing Flag-tagged CCR2B containing site-directed mutations in this region, 21-26, including a consensus tyrosine sulfation site were used to determine MCP-1 binding and its biological consequences.

Identification of monoclonal antibody At5 as a new member of HNK-1 antibody family: the reactivity with myelin-associated glycoprotein and with two brain-specific proteoglycans, phosphacan and neurocan.

Monoclonal antibody At5 was primarily developed against chordin, a notochord-specific antigen of Acipenseridae (sturgeon fishes). In higher vertebrates the antibody reacted mainly with neural tissue antigens. In this study we have shown that the specificity of monoclonal antibody At5 is similar to that of antibodies of HNK-1 family which react with two glycolipids and with several high molecular weight glycoconjugates of neural tissue.

Developmental expression of glial fibrillary acidic protein gene in human embryos.

Glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) is an intermediate filament protein of astrocytes. We have shown by Northern blot analysis that GFAP mRNA first appears in the spinal cord at the age of 8 weeks and in the brain at the age of 9 weeks of embryogenesis, and its relative contents increases at later stages. A plasmid selected from a cDNA expression library with an insert encoding for almost full length of human GFAP was used in this study.

Phosphorylation of two human neurochordins by mammalian casein kinase 1.

Neurochordins are a family of immunologically interrelated high-M(r) neural tissue glycoproteins which includes four major molecular species and several minor ones. Incubation of the total preparation of immunoaffinity-isolated neurochordins with ATP and rabbit casein kinase 1 resulted in phosphorylation of two neurochordin polypeptides, A and B3. The maximum levels of modification were 7-8 and 2 mol of 32P incorporated per 1 mol of polypeptide, respectively.