Robert Keefe wrote- >Is anybody working on Flow of Y.pestis? Is it just coincidental that you ask about this organism on the day when New York records its first cases of bubonic plague (in a couple from New Mexico, probably acquired without benefit of bioterrorism)? The people to ask are probably at USAMRIID, Porton Down, and Vector. Pete Stopa at Edgewood did some work with anthrax, but not, as far as I know, with plague. The problem is that there aren't a whole lot of flow cytometers in facilities with the appropriate biosafety level, and that many of the safe instruments are dedicated to other pathogens, notably HIV. More to the point, what do you want to learn from flow cytometric analysis of Y. pestis (that you can't find out some other way)? If there's a compelling reason to do the experiments, I might be able to help make them happen. >And are there any commercially available monoclonals to its antigens? From a Google Search: The Navy has a patent pending on an antibody for diagnostic identification of Y. pestis. Accurate Chemical (www.accuratechemical.com), Advanced Immunochemical (www.advimmuno.com), Fitzgerald Industries International (www.fitzgerald-fii.com) and Research Diagnostics (www.researchd.com) have monoclonals to the F1 antigen; they are not labeled. Inquiries to people in labs involved in biowarfare countermeasures - or in labs working on the biology of Y. pestis - are likely to turn up a greater variety of monoclonals. -Howard
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