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“The application of phage display technology to mammalian proteins with multiple transmembrane regions has had limited success due to the difficulty in generating these proteins in sufficient amounts and purity. We report here a method that can be easily and generally applied to sorting of phage display libraries with multispan

protein targets solubilized in detergent. A key feature of this approach is the production of biotinylated multispan proteins in virions of a baculovirus vector that allows library panning without prior purification of the target protein. We obtained Fab fragments from a nave synthetic antibody phage library that, when engineered into full-length immunoglobulin (Ig)G, specifically bind cells expressing claudin-1, Selleck Necrostatin-1 a protein with four transmembrane regions that is used as an entry co-receptor by the hepatitis C virus (HCV). Affinity-matured variants of one of these antibodies efficiently inhibited HCV infection. The use

of baculovirus particles as a source of mammalian multispan protein facilitates the application of phage display to this difficult class of proteins.”
“Bhanja virus (BHAV) and its antigenically 8-Bromo-cAMP close relatives Forecariah virus (FORV), Kismayo virus (KISV), and Palma virus (PALV) are thought to be members of the family Bunyaviridae, but they have not been assigned to a genus or species. Despite their broad geographical distribution and reports that BHAV causes sporadic cases of febrile illness and encephalitis in humans, the public health importance of the Bhanja serogroup viruses remains unclear, due in part to the lack of sequence and biochemical information for the virus proteins. In order to better define the molecular characteristics Tryptophan synthase of this group, we determined the full-length sequences of the L, M, and S genome segments of multiple isolates of BHAV as well as FORV and PALV. The genome structures of these Bhanja

viruses are similar to those of viruses belonging to the genus Phlebovirus. Functional domains and amino acid motifs in the viral proteins that are conserved among other known phleboviruses were also identified in proteins of the BHAV group. Phylogenetic and serological analyses revealed that the BHAVs are most closely related to the novel emerging tick-borne phleboviruses severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome virus and Heartland virus, which have recently been implicated as causing severe acute febrile illnesses associated with thrombocytopenia in humans in China and the United States. Our results indicate that the Bhanja serogroup viruses constitute a single novel species in the genus Phlebovirus. The results of this study should facilitate epidemiological surveillance for other, similar tick-borne phleboviruses that may represent unrecognized causes of febrile illness in humans.