One especially favored target for immune recognition is bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS). This macromolecule is found only in the outer lipid bilayer that surrounds the cell walls of gram-negative bacteria, such as Neisseria, Salmonella, and Escherichia coli. Each molecule of bacterial lipopolysaccharide consists of a core carbohydrate linked on one side to a phospholipid (called lipid A) that is anchored in the bilayer and on the other side to a long polysaccharide chain (called the O sidechain) that extends outward from the bacterial surface (Figure 1 bellow). The sequence of sugars making up the O sidechain is species-specific and highly variable, even within a single bacterial genus: For example, more than 1000 variants in Salmonella are known. (more…)
Toll-like receptors (TLRs) act as receptors for numerous stimuli of immune cells, including bacterial cell wall constituents (l ...
Bacteria cause allergic disease because of toxicity, invasiveness, immunopathology, or lends of these three mechanisms. Thus much ...
Exotoxins are noxious proteins secreted by many bacteria. These toxins are often heat-labile and thus can be heat-inactivated f ...
A few of the best known humoral effectors of innate immunity are listed in Table 1 bellow, along with the types of target molec ...
Breast milk contains a variety of bioactive substances, among them soluble CD14 (sCD14), which plays an important role in innat ...