Molecular cloning of a lipolysis-stimulated remnant receptor expressed in the liver.

The lipolysis-stimulated receptor (LSR) is a lipoprotein receptor primarily expressed in the liver and activated by free fatty acids. Antibodies inhibiting LSR functions showed that the receptor is a heterotrimer or tetramer consisting of 68-kDa (alpha) and 56-kDa (beta) subunits associated through disulfide bridges. Screening of expression libraries with these antibodies led to identification of mRNAs derived by alternate splicing from a single gene and coding for proteins with molecular masses matching that of LSR alpha and beta.

Automated determination of amplified PCR products: application to HCV viremia detection and quantification.

A simple and reliable automated method was developed for the detection of amplified products after PCR, which provides an alternative to the time-consuming Southern blotting and hybridization procedure. For the determination and quantification of hepatitis C viremia, the digoxigenin labelling process was applied during the PCR of the amplicons, followed by an inverse hybridization assay performed with biotinylated probes. The detection of the PCR amplified products could be processed as simply as an ELISA, or by means of an automated analyser.