Showing papers in "Molecular Immunology in 2004"

TL;DR: The effector arm of innate immunity has been tackled, largely though the use of biochemical methods, and genetic dissection of innate immune pathways has been pursued with great success in model organisms.

TL;DR: This review summarises the current knowledge of the role of factor H in health and disease and outlines the functional domains responsible for these regulatory activities in factor H.

TL;DR: Knowledge of the unique molecular and cellular innate immunological interactions that occur in the development and resolution of pathology should facilitate the design of effective therapeutic strategies to fight selectively against intruders.

TL;DR: All cells continually survey their environment and make decisions based on cues encountered, where signals transmitted by the B cell Ag-receptor influence not only cellular selection, maturation, and survival, but are imperative in generating the ultimate effector function of B cells, i.e. antibody production.

TL;DR: The induced genes include the homologues of the human TLR1 and TLR2 genes, whose functions are associated with mycobacterial infections, underscoring the suitability of zebrafish as a model for analysis of the vertebrate innate immune system.

TL;DR: It is demonstrated here that TIR-domain containing adapters MyD88 and SARM are present in zebrafish, showing that TLR adapter molecules are highly conserved in evolution.

TL;DR: One function, amidase activity, is shared by some insect and mammalian P GRPs, whereas antibacterial activity of some mammalian PGRPs is unique for mammals.

TL;DR: It is revealed that some TLRs possess a MyD88-independent pathway, which is represented by interferon (IFN)-beta production induced by LPS stimulation, which indicates that additional signaling molecules other than MyD 88 exist in the TLR signaling pathway.

TL;DR: The challenge of mice deficient in the various PRRs in natural infection models will help to decipher the contribution of these molecules not only in the innate immune response against pathogen infection but also how these proteins may instruct the adaptive immune response in order to have a tailored immune responseagainst a particular microbe.

TL;DR: It is shown that Dectin-1, a murine type II C-type lectin-like receptor, was able to non-opsonically recognize β- 1,3 and β-2,6 linked glucan rich particles and intact yeast.

TL;DR: The overall observation that these molecules play such diverse signaling functions leads one to the conclusion that this family of proteins serves as general modulators of immune cell signaling.

TL;DR: The role of thioester-containing proteins in innate immune responses of insects, represented by multi-member families both in the fruitfly, Drosophila melanogaster, and in the mosquito, Anopheles gambiae are discussed.

TL;DR: This review article seeks to shed light on the varied roles of C-type lectin receptors, particularly those receptors expressed by antigen presenting cells and those with known ligands, and also review more recent data on several members of this family.

TL;DR: The structural requirements and functional importance of the interactions between C4BP and its various ligands are discussed and two novel functions have recently been ascribed to C4 BP.

TL;DR: It is shown that factor H-related complement regulatory defects can be detected in the patients' serum with a simple hemolytic assay, and data obtained from HUS patients and control individuals indicate that this assay is a useful tool for the molecular diagnosis of factorH-related HUS.

TL;DR: A role for complement is described in five distinct stages of B cell differentiation in which complement participates in humoral immunity.

TL;DR: The future use of gene ablation technology may be the most appropriate way to understand the function of CPN in vivo, because of the highly conserved active sites and the possible redundant functions of carboxypeptidases.

TL;DR: Toll-like receptors play an essential role in the detection and elimination of invading microbes, and different TLRs use different combinations of these adaptors, leading to the activation of common and unique pathways involved in the elimination of the invading microbe.

TL;DR: The normal actions of the gammac cytokines, the pathogenesis and treatment protocols for SCID, and finally, the production of a new, selective Jak3 inhibitor capable of preventing transplant rejection in two animal models are discussed.

TL;DR: The emerging data on the receptor-dependent and -independent signals transduced by complement components are of great consequence to health and disease and are described.

TL;DR: The ancient origin of MASP-1 and its thrombin-like activity suggests its involvement in a coagulation-based defense mechanism in the early evolution of innate immunity.

TL;DR: A novel splice variant (delta8-RAGE) of RAGE mRNA, which lacks exon 8 of the genomic RAGE gene and contains an early stop codon in exon 10 due to a frame shift mutation is reported.

TL;DR: The purpose of this article is to provide an up to date overview of these two proteins with particular emphasis on their unique structural and functional features, their multi-faceted nature and most importantly their role in infection and inflammation.

TL;DR: The worm genome encodes various proteins which might have this recognition function, such as numerous proteins containing C-type lectin domains, and these and other candidates are discussed.

TL;DR: The focus of the current review is to summarize the recent progress in the understanding of Mannan-binding lectin functions.

TL;DR: Chronic B cell activation resulting from augmented CD19 signaling leads to skin fibrosis possibly through IL-6 overproduction, as well as autoantibody production, in tight-skin mice and SSc patients.

TL;DR: Current knowledge of when and where anaphylatoxins contribute to and control the development of allergic asthma is outlined, with a model in which C3a and C5a play important but opposing roles during allergen-induced T-cell polarization: C 3a promotes Th2 responses, whereas C5A prevents Th2 polarization.

TL;DR: Two new insights are discussed: degeneracy among CD8 T cells appears to be substantially less than among CD4 T cells, and T cell clones characterized by a high affinity TCR interaction with a given pMHC complex are less degenerate than lower avidity T cells that require higher levels of pM HC complex for their activation.

TL;DR: It is reported that a significant increase in recombinant fusion antibody expression can be accomplished by adjusting the nucleotide sequence to conform to certain codon pairing rules, and made it possible to isolate stably transfected mammalian cell clones producing high levels of fusion protein, which had not been possible using the original gene.

TL;DR: The role of heat-shock proteins in the pathogenesis of two multifactorial diseases, i.e. inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and atherosclerosis is highlighted and a new hypothesis on "immunodeficiency burden" is presented.