High-throughput clonality analysis requires monitoring two main characteristics of clones: HTLV-1 integration sites and the number of infected cells in each clone (clone size).
As the aim of the study was only to analyse the characteristics of clones generated from HLA-identical siblings, no attempt was made to expand clones to numbers that might be required for therapeutic purposes.
In order to determine the genomic characteristics of clones and to identify possible associations between genetic factors and clinical features, we designed a macroarray composed of 2,324 probes and analyzed the genome content of a subset of 60 bacteremic isolates selected to be representative of the diversity of genotypes (Additional file 1).
The overall rankings were reproducible between data sets (See additional file 1) for the same E. coli compartment indicating that overall scFv expression (spheroplast level) and localisation to the periplasm and culture supernatant in soluble form are clone-specific characteristics, that vary from clone to clone.
These clones have no equivalent among the clones from the ancestral and founder cells of the SE; they have all the characteristics of sub-clones of the clones of founder cells, as each can be related to at least one of them (Fig. 3, compare E H with Fig. 2K; G, J, K and L with C; I and J' with D).
A major strength of yeast display as a novel antibody discovery platform is the ability to characterize the binding properties, i.e., the affinity and epitope binding characteristics, of a clone without the need for subcloning, expression and purification of the scFv.
All other characteristics of this clone corresponded to the ISCT criteria [17] (Figure 3, Table 1), questioning the relevance of CD105 expression for MSC characterization.
The original and current nomenclature and molecular characteristics of each clone are shown in Figure 1b.
Future studies investigating the virulence characteristics of a clone need to keep this in mind and present data from a number of representative isolates.
A second method of creating a universal reference from the characteristics of the clone is described by Sterreburg et al. [ 14].
