scholarly journals Expression of Green Fluorescent Protein as a Marker for Effects of Antileishmanial Compounds In Vitro

2001 ◽  
Vol 45 (12) ◽  
pp. 3654-3656 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah W. Kamau ◽  
Felix Grimm ◽  
Adrian B. Hehl

ABSTRACT Transgenic Leishmania infantum promastigotes, which constitutively express green fluorescent protein (GFP) in their cytoplasm, were used to monitor the effects of antileishmanial compounds in real time. The GFP-based assay provided a reliable measure of drug-induced inhibitory effects on protein expression, resulting in a dynamic picture of the responses of leishmanial promastigotes to the compounds tested.

2000 ◽  
Vol 44 (6) ◽  
pp. 1588-1597 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manfred Marschall ◽  
Martina Freitag ◽  
Sigrid Weiler ◽  
Gabriele Sorg ◽  
Thomas Stamminger

ABSTRACT A recombinant human cytomegalovirus (AD169-GFP) expressing green fluorescent protein was generated by homologous recombination. Infection of human fibroblast cultures with AD169-GFP virus produced stable and readily detectable amounts of GFP signals which were quantitated by automated fluorometry. Hereby, high levels of sensitivity and reproducibility could be achieved, compared to those with the conventional plaque reduction assay. Antiviral activities were determined for four reference compounds as well as a set of putative novel cytomegalovirus inhibitors. The results obtained were exactly in line with the known characteristics of reference compounds and furthermore revealed distinct antiviral activities of novel in vitro inhibitors. The fluorometric data could be confirmed by GFP-based flow cytometry and fluorescence microscopy. In addition, laboratory virus variants derived from the recombinant AD169-GFP virus provided further possibilities for study of the characteristics of drug resistance. The GFP-based antiviral assay appeared to be very reliable for measuring virus-inhibitory effects in concentration- and time-dependent fashions and might also be adaptable for high-throughput screenings of cytomegalovirus-specific antiviral agents.


Viruses ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 632
Author(s):  
Yingyun Cai ◽  
Shuiqing Yu ◽  
Ying Fang ◽  
Laura Bollinger ◽  
Yanhua Li ◽  
...  

Simian hemorrhagic fever virus (SHFV) causes acute, lethal disease in macaques. We developed a single-plasmid cDNA-launch infectious clone of SHFV (rSHFV) and modified the clone to rescue an enhanced green fluorescent protein-expressing rSHFV-eGFP that can be used for rapid and quantitative detection of infection. SHFV has a narrow cell tropism in vitro, with only the grivet MA-104 cell line and a few other grivet cell lines being susceptible to virion entry and permissive to infection. Using rSHFV-eGFP, we demonstrate that one cricetid rodent cell line and three ape cell lines also fully support SHFV replication, whereas 55 human cell lines, 11 bat cell lines, and three rodent cells do not. Interestingly, some human and other mammalian cell lines apparently resistant to SHFV infection are permissive after transfection with the rSHFV-eGFP cDNA-launch plasmid. To further demonstrate the investigative potential of the infectious clone system, we introduced stop codons into eight viral open reading frames (ORFs). This approach suggested that at least one ORF, ORF 2b’, is dispensable for SHFV in vitro replication. Our proof-of-principle experiments indicated that rSHFV-eGFP is a useful tool for illuminating the understudied molecular biology of SHFV.


2021 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 096368972097821
Author(s):  
Andrea Tenorio-Mina ◽  
Daniel Cortés ◽  
Joel Esquivel-Estudillo ◽  
Adolfo López-Ornelas ◽  
Alejandro Cabrera-Wrooman ◽  
...  

Human skin contains keratinocytes in the epidermis. Such cells share their ectodermal origin with the central nervous system (CNS). Recent studies have demonstrated that terminally differentiated somatic cells can adopt a pluripotent state, or can directly convert its phenotype to neurons, after ectopic expression of transcription factors. In this article we tested the hypothesis that human keratinocytes can adopt neural fates after culturing them in suspension with a neural medium. Initially, keratinocytes expressed Keratins and Vimentin. After neural induction, transcriptional upregulation of NESTIN, SOX2, VIMENTIN, SOX1, and MUSASHI1 was observed, concomitant with significant increases in NESTIN detected by immunostaining. However, in vitro differentiation did not yield the expression of neuronal or astrocytic markers. We tested the differentiation potential of control and neural-induced keratinocytes by grafting them in the developing CNS of rats, through ultrasound-guided injection. For this purpose, keratinocytes were transduced with lentivirus that contained the coding sequence of green fluorescent protein. Cell sorting was employed to select cells with high fluorescence. Unexpectedly, 4 days after grafting these cells in the ventricles, both control and neural-induced cells expressed green fluorescent protein together with the neuronal proteins βIII-Tubulin and Microtubule-Associated Protein 2. These results support the notion that in vivo environment provides appropriate signals to evaluate the neuronal differentiation potential of keratinocytes or other non-neural cell populations.


2001 ◽  
Vol 44 (S1) ◽  
pp. S339-S341
Author(s):  
K. E. Luker ◽  
G. D. Luker ◽  
C. M. Pica ◽  
J. L. Dahlheimer ◽  
T. J. Fahrner ◽  
...  

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