Biomedical subjects

J D Burgos

Publications and source records attributed to J D Burgos.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1996

Fractal representation of the immune B cell repertoire.

The immune repertoire is characterized by a complex and dynamic organization. Here I suggest, based on the presence of well-defined immune reactivity patterns (RP) analyzed using a linguistic analogy, that the B cell repertoires could possess a fractal structure. A simple estimation method of the fractal dimension (D) for a given immune B repertoire was developed, and D demonstrated to be an useful tool to define what complexity is regarding the immune repertoire, and to evaluate the complexity level of the immune B repertoire among age-structured groups of mice sensitized with the hemagglutinin (HA) molecule of influenza virus. Also, since a fractal-linguistic point of view, considerations are made about the ontogeny, connectivity, chaotic regimes, and size of the immune repertoire. Fractal analysis indicates that the immune repertoire shows a Zipf-like scaling behavior, a statistical property of natural languages. This result suggests that immune repertoire is structured like a powerful language.

Animals↗

PubMed1996

Zipf-scaling behavior in the immune system.

The Zipf law, an approach to analyzing linguistic texts, was applied to study the Cytotoxic T Lymphocytes (CTL) repertoire, one of the major components of the immune system. A Zipf-scaling behavior was observed in those CTL repertoires obtained in normal or conventional mice. In contrast, CTL repertoires from irradiated chimeric animals, showed a non-scaling statistical behavior when tested by the Zipf analysis, suggesting that normal repertoires work like a structured biological language. The fractal dimension (D) was derived from the Zipf plots, and correlates well with the nature of the repertoires: high, D > 0.8, in conventional mice. Non-fractal, D > 1, in chimeric animals, and low, D < 0.3, in athymic mice. Then, D seems to be an useful tool to characterize the current status of the immune system.

Animals↗

PubMed1996

[Detection of anti-Treponema pallidum antibodies with colloidal gold immunoprobes].

BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to evaluate the usefulness of colloidal gold probes widely used in histochemistry and electronic microscopy for the serologic diagnosis of syphilis. METHODS: One hundred eighty-nine sera which had been submitted to the traditional fluorescent trigenemic absorption (FTA-ABS) test and had later been tested with the new colloidal gold probe method (IAT-ABS). RESULTS: Out of a total of 103 positive samples by FTA-ABS all were positive when tested by gold immunoprobes (sensitivity 100%). Eighty-six samples which were negative by immunofluorescence were all negative by IAT-ABS (specificity 100%). CONCLUSIONS: The new method of colloidal gold probes with the current microscopy is useful for confirming serologic diagnosis of syphilis.

Adolescent↗