He concentration of GXM was determined relative to known GXM standards

He concentration of GXM was determined relative to known GXM standards on each plate.Materials and Methods Ethics StatementVenous blood of healthy male and female volunteers was collected in accordance with the guidelines and approval of the Wright Center for Graduate Medical Education Institutional Review Board, Scranton, PA. All blood donors were informed of the goals of the study and agreed by written consent prior to blood donation. All animal use complied with federal regulations and both the University of Utah and Albert Einstein College of Medicine Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee guidelines. The protocol was approved by the Committee on the Ethics of Animal Experiments of the University of Utah (protocol # 9711011) and Albert Einstein College of Medicine (protocol #20100102).Isolation and culture of human monocytesPeripheral blood mononuclear cells were isolated by density gradient centrifugation using histopaque-1077 (Sigma). PBMCs were washed with PBS and suspended in RPMI-1640 medium with 10 human serum (50 :50 male:female, Innovative Research) and 10 ng/ml macrophage colony stimulating factor (M-CSF, PeproTech). Monocytes were allowed to adhere and differentiate into monocyte derived macrophages for 48 hours at 37uC in 5 CO2, gently washed and resuspended in RPMI-1640 medium with 10 human sera (50 :50 male:female) and 10 ng/ml M-CSF for another 48 hours. Macrophages were harvested with Versene (Invitrogen), washed with PBS and resuspended in RPMI-1640 medium containing 10 human serum (50 :50 male:female) and 100 ng/ml LPS (Fisher). 26104 macrophages were seeded in 96-well plates and allowed to adhere overnight at 37uC in 5 CO2.StrainsA set of 106 clinical strains isolated from HIV+ patients at the Princess Marina Hospital in Gaborone, Botswana [14] were a kind gift to E.E. McClelland from Drs. Gregory P. Bisson and Rameshwari Thakur. All identifying patient data for these isolates were deleted and unavailable to researchers. To understand why male AIDS patients had increased death, a subset of 28 Cn isolates (12 from male patients, 16 from female patients) were used for further characterization. These strains were typed using multilocus Title Loaded From File sequence typing [15]. Since eleven of these strains contain one new allele, we are waiting for the MLST curator to assign these strains sequence types. However, comparing the remaining known alleles of these and other strains with the database suggests that all 28 strains belong to either the VNI or VNB groups and are serotype A. While these isolates were originally chosen to be equally matched by patient mortality, the proportion of strains from males and females is very similar to the proportion of male and female patients in the study Title Loaded From File overall (57 of isolates from females in the subset vs. 60 of isolates from females overall). For all experiments, cultures were started from frozen stocks in order limit effects arising from in vitro passaging. The laboratory strain H99 was also used in some experiments.PhagocytosisThe phagocytic efficacy of macrophages isolated from healthy male and female donors was measured as in [18] with the following modifications. Briefly, macrophages were seeded into a 96-well plate (4 wells per Cn isolate) in RPMI-1640 media containing 10 human serum (50 :50 male:female), and 100 ng/ml LPS at a density of 26104 macrophages and incubated overnight at 37uC with 5 CO2. All Cn strains were grown for 2? d in YPD media at 37uC, washed 36 with 10 ml.He concentration of GXM was determined relative to known GXM standards on each plate.Materials and Methods Ethics StatementVenous blood of healthy male and female volunteers was collected in accordance with the guidelines and approval of the Wright Center for Graduate Medical Education Institutional Review Board, Scranton, PA. All blood donors were informed of the goals of the study and agreed by written consent prior to blood donation. All animal use complied with federal regulations and both the University of Utah and Albert Einstein College of Medicine Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee guidelines. The protocol was approved by the Committee on the Ethics of Animal Experiments of the University of Utah (protocol # 9711011) and Albert Einstein College of Medicine (protocol #20100102).Isolation and culture of human monocytesPeripheral blood mononuclear cells were isolated by density gradient centrifugation using histopaque-1077 (Sigma). PBMCs were washed with PBS and suspended in RPMI-1640 medium with 10 human serum (50 :50 male:female, Innovative Research) and 10 ng/ml macrophage colony stimulating factor (M-CSF, PeproTech). Monocytes were allowed to adhere and differentiate into monocyte derived macrophages for 48 hours at 37uC in 5 CO2, gently washed and resuspended in RPMI-1640 medium with 10 human sera (50 :50 male:female) and 10 ng/ml M-CSF for another 48 hours. Macrophages were harvested with Versene (Invitrogen), washed with PBS and resuspended in RPMI-1640 medium containing 10 human serum (50 :50 male:female) and 100 ng/ml LPS (Fisher). 26104 macrophages were seeded in 96-well plates and allowed to adhere overnight at 37uC in 5 CO2.StrainsA set of 106 clinical strains isolated from HIV+ patients at the Princess Marina Hospital in Gaborone, Botswana [14] were a kind gift to E.E. McClelland from Drs. Gregory P. Bisson and Rameshwari Thakur. All identifying patient data for these isolates were deleted and unavailable to researchers. To understand why male AIDS patients had increased death, a subset of 28 Cn isolates (12 from male patients, 16 from female patients) were used for further characterization. These strains were typed using multilocus sequence typing [15]. Since eleven of these strains contain one new allele, we are waiting for the MLST curator to assign these strains sequence types. However, comparing the remaining known alleles of these and other strains with the database suggests that all 28 strains belong to either the VNI or VNB groups and are serotype A. While these isolates were originally chosen to be equally matched by patient mortality, the proportion of strains from males and females is very similar to the proportion of male and female patients in the study overall (57 of isolates from females in the subset vs. 60 of isolates from females overall). For all experiments, cultures were started from frozen stocks in order limit effects arising from in vitro passaging. The laboratory strain H99 was also used in some experiments.PhagocytosisThe phagocytic efficacy of macrophages isolated from healthy male and female donors was measured as in [18] with the following modifications. Briefly, macrophages were seeded into a 96-well plate (4 wells per Cn isolate) in RPMI-1640 media containing 10 human serum (50 :50 male:female), and 100 ng/ml LPS at a density of 26104 macrophages and incubated overnight at 37uC with 5 CO2. All Cn strains were grown for 2? d in YPD media at 37uC, washed 36 with 10 ml.