Cluster analysis of host cytokine responses to biodefense pathogens in a whole blood ex vivo exposure model (WEEM).

Background: Rapid detection and therapeutic intervention for infectious and emerging diseases is a major scientific goal in biodefense and public health. Toward this end, cytokine profiles in human blood were investigated using a human whole blood ex vivo exposure model, called WEEM.

Results: Samples of whole blood from healthy volunteers were incubated with seven pathogens including Yersinia pseudotuberculosis, Yersinia enterocolitica, Bacillus anthracis, and multiple strains of Yersinia pestis, and multiplexed protein expression profiling was conducted on supernatants of these cultures with an antibody array to detect 30 cytokines simultaneously.

Principles of 3' splice site selection and alternative splicing for an unusual group II intron from Bacillus anthracis.

We investigated the self-splicing properties of two introns from the bacterium Bacillus anthracis. One intron (B.a.