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Due to drawbacks of live attenuated vaccines, much more attention has been focused on screening of Brucella protective antigens as subunit vaccine candidates. Brucella is a facultative intracellular bacterium and cell mediated immunity plays essential roles for protection against Brucella infection. Identification of Brucella antigens that present T-cell epitopes to the host could enable development of such vaccines. In this study, 45 proven or putative pathogenesis-associated factors of Brucella were selected according to currently available data. After expressed and purified, 35 proteins were qualified for analysis of their abilities to stimulate T-cell responses in vitro . Then, an in vitro gamma interferon (IFN-γ) assay was used to identify potential T-cell antigens from B. abortus . In total, 7 individual proteins that stimulated strong IFN-γ responses in splenocytes from mice immunized with B. abortus live vaccine S19 were identified. The protective efficiencies of these 7 recombinant proteins were further evaluated. Mice given BAB1_1316 (CobB) or BAB1_1688 (AsnC) plus adjuvant could provide protection against virulent B. abortus infection, similarly with the known protective antigen Cu-Zn SOD and the license vaccine S19. In addition, CobB and AsnC could induce strong antibodies responses in BALB/c mice. Altogether, the present study showed that CobB or AsnC protein could be useful antigen candidates for the development of subunit vaccines against brucellosis with adequate immunogenicity and protection efficacy.

Structural and electronic properties of Si termination, O-middle termination, and O-rich terminations of a quartz (001) surface as well as water molecule adsorption on it were simulated by means of density functional theory (DFT). Calculated results show that the O-middle termination exposing a single oxygen atom on the surface is the most stable model of quartz (001) surface, with the lowest surface energy at 1.969 J·m −2 , followed by the O-rich termination and Si termination at 2.892 J·m −2 and 2.896 J·m −2 , respectively. The surface properties of different terminations mainly depend on the surface-exposed silicon and oxygen atoms, as almost all the contributions to the Fermi level (E F ) in density of states (DOS) are offered by the surface-exposed atoms, especially the O2p state. In the molecular adsorption model, H 2 O prefers to adsorb on the surface Si and O atoms, mainly via O 1 -H 1 bond at 1.259 Å and Si 1 -O w at 1.970 Å by Van der Waals force and weak hydrogen bond with an adsorption energy of −57.89 kJ·mol −1 . In the dissociative adsorption model, the O-middle termination is hydroxylated after adsorption, generating two new Si-OH silanol groups on the surface and forming the O w H 2 ···O 4 hydrogen bond at a length of 2.690 Å, along with a large adsorption energy of −99.37 kJ·mol −1 . These variations in the presence of H 2 O may have a great influence on the subsequent interfacial reactions on the quartz surface.

Background:The application of tubular microscopes discectomy (TMD) was supposed to have similar or better results than conventional microdiscectomy (CMD). However, this conclusion had not been verified by sufficient evidence. Therefore, the focus of this meta-analysis was to assess the efficiency, safety, and clinical outcome of these 2 surgical procedures for treating lumbar disk herniation (LDH).Methods:PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Collaboration Central databases were searched for studies which compared the results of TMD and CMD for the treatment of LDH up to July 2017. Data analysis was conducted using RevMan 5.3. A standardized electronic form of 17 predefined criteria from the Consort statement was used for the quality assessment.Results:Eight randomized controlled trials (RCT) and 2 retrospective studies were included in this review, including 804 patients. The pooled analysis showed that there was no significant difference in operative time (P = .38), blood loss (P = .14), the length of hospital stay (P = .47), the rate of intraoperative complications (P = .79), postoperative complications (P = .16), dural tear (P = .87), the reoperation (P = .20), the short-term back visual analog scale (VAS) scores (P = .76), the long-term back VAS scores (P = .64), the short-term leg VAS scores (P = .09), the long-term leg VAS scores (P = .35), and the Oswestry disability index (ODI) scores (P = .41).Conclusion:The results of this meta-analysis demonstrate that TMD and CMD are both safe and effective surgical procedures which can be recommended for treating LDH. Additionally, the conclusion should be cautiously treated, because it was reached in the context of limited amount of studies and relatively small sample size. Therefore, future studies with good design and more large samples are required to validate this conclusion.

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