After 3 days, HSCs were isolated from the bone marrow. After 10 days in culture, 1×105 cells of two different HSC populations were injected into Rag-2/γC−/− mice expressing either H-2Kd or H-2Kb. Mice were analyzed 4–5 wk after HSC transfer. Animal experiments were done in compliance with the guidelines of German law and the Max-Planck-Institute of Proteasome inhibitor Immunobiology and Epigenetics. HSCs were grown in Iscove’s medium (Biochrom) supplemented

with 2% of heat inactivated FCS (PAN Biotech), 10 mM L-glutamine, 100 U/mL penicillin, 100 U/mL streptomycin (GIBCO), 50 mM 2-mercaptoethanol, 0.03% primatone (Sigma-Aldrich), 4.2 mg/mL insulin (Sigma-Aldrich), IL-6, IL-3 and c-kit-ligand. The expression of H-2d and H-2b was determined by flow cytometry using the specific monoclonal antibodies H-2Dd-PE and H-2Kb-FITC

(BD). Cells were stained with anti-B220/CD45R-PerCP (RA3-6B2, BD), anti-CD43-PE (S7, BD), anti-CD19-PE/-PerCP (1D3, BD), anti-CD21-APC (7G6, BD), anti-CD23-PE/biotin (B3B4, BD/PharMingen), anti-IgM-Cy5 (Jackson Immunoresearch) and anti-idiotype 54.1 (kindly provided click here by D. Nemazee). Flow cytometric analysis was performed with FACS-Calibur (BD). Statistical analysis was performed with the GraphPad Prism 4 software using Student’s t-test as the statistical hypothesis test. The authors thank U. Stauffer, N. Joswig and C. Johner for mouse work and further assistance. They thank E. Hobeika for the mb1-lox-GFP mice, P. Nielsen, D. Nemazee and M. Reth for critical reading of the manuscript. This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (SFB620 and SFB746). Conflict of interest: The authors declare no financial or commercial conflict of interest. Detailed facts of importance to specialist readers are published as ”Supporting Information”.

Such documents are peer-reviewed, but not copy-edited or typeset. They are made available as submitted by the authors. “
“Two outbreaks of Streptococcus suis ST7 occurred in humans in 1998 and 2005 in China. PFGE of Fenbendazole chromosome restriction fragments found all ST7 isolates to be indistinguishable. Due to the genetic homogeneity of ST7 isolates, development of a rapid sub-typing method with high discriminatory power for ST7 isolates is required. In this study, a novel method, MLVA, was developed to type S. suis serotype 2 strains. Further, this method was used to analyze outbreak-associated ST7 strains in China. A total of 144 ST7 S. suis isolates were sub-typed into 34 MLVA types. Among these, eight isolates from the 1998 outbreak were sub-typed into five MLVA types, of which four MLVA types were also detected in Sichuan in 2005. These data indicate that the pathogens responsible for the two outbreaks had the same origin. In addition, some observations also provided molecular evidence for the transmission route, possibly indicating that the MLVA method has usefulness in epidemiology. The developed MLVA scheme for S.