Publications by authors named "C Michael Bowman"

: Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infections usually cause mild, cold-like symptoms in most people, but are a leading infectious disease causing infant death and hospitalization and can result in increased morbidity and mortality in older adults and at-risk individuals. Pfizer has developed Abrysvo, an unadjuvanted bivalent recombinant protein subunit vaccine containing prefusion-stabilized fusion (F) proteins representing RSV A and RSV B subgroups (RSVpreF). It is the only RSV vaccine approved for both maternal immunization to protect infants and active immunization of older adults (≥60 years) and 18-59-year-old individuals with high-risk conditions for prevention of RSV disease.

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The most severe form of α-thalassemia results from loss of all four copies of α-globin. Postnatally, patients face challenges similar to β-thalassemia, including severe anemia and erythrotoxicity due to the imbalance of β-globin and α-globin chains. Despite progress in genome editing treatments for β-thalassemia, there is no analogous curative option for α-thalassemia.

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Unlabelled: Many species of proteobacterial methane-consuming bacteria (methanotrophs) form a hauberk-like envelope represented by a surface (S-) layer protein (SLP) matrix. While several proteins were predicted to be associated with the cell surface, the composition and function of the hauberk matrix remained elusive. Here, we report the identification of the genes encoding the hauberk-forming proteins in two gamma-proteobacterial (Type I) methanotrophs, 5GB1 (EQU24_15540) and 20Z (MEALZ_0971 and MEALZ_0972).

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Understanding the confinement of fast ions is crucial for plasma heating and non-inductive current drive, i.e., for the operation of a fusion reactor.

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Covalent hydrogel networks suffer from a stiffness-toughness conflict, where increased crosslinking density enhances the modulus of the material but also leads to embrittlement and diminished extensibility. Recently, strategies have been developed to form highly entangled hydrogels, colloquially referred to as tanglemers, by optimizing polymerization conditions to maximize the density and length of polymer chains and minimize the crosslinker concentration. It is challenging to assess entanglements in crosslinked networks beyond approximating their theoretical contribution to mechanical properties; thus, in this work, we synthesize and characterize polyacrylamide tanglemers using a photolabile crosslinker, which allows for direct assessment of covalent trapping of entanglements under tension.

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