(2015) Editorial: Manipulation of the cellular microbicidal response and endocytic dynamic by pathogens membrane factors. Microbes such as bacteria, parasites and fungi, have evolved specialized mechanisms to survive and replicate in their host. While high pathogen reproduction is the main purpose to improve next generation growth, adaptation of pathogens to their hosts depends on factors affec...

Candida albicans is an opportunistic human fungal pathogen that causes a variety of diseases, ranging from superficial mucosal to life-threatening systemic infections, the latter particularly in patients with defects in innate immune function. C. albicans cells phagocytosed by macrophages undergo a dramatic change in their metabolism in which amino acids are a key nutrient. We have shown that a...

Intravascular pH was measured within the lysosomes and newly formed phagosomes in cultured mouse peritoneal macrophages. The kinetics of pH change in both vacuolar systems was quantitatively determined within a large cell population by fluorescence spectroscopy. Additionally, pH changes within individual phagosomes were followed semiquantitatively using indicator dyes. Two novel findings were m...

Recent observations demonstrated that the antimalarial drug chloroquine (CQ) can kill the opportunistic fungus Cryptococcus neoformans. Since CQ blunts lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-alpha release, it was hypothesized that this drug would also interfere with the inflammatory response to C. neoformans and Candida albicans, another fungal opportunist. CQ inhibited TN...

Macrophage pseudopodia that surround objects during phagocytosis contain a meshwork of actin filaments and exclude organelles. Between these pseudopodia at the base of developing phagosomes, the organelle exclusion ceases, and lysosomes enter the cell periphery to fuse with the phagosomes. Macrophages also extend hyaline pseudopodia on the surface of nylon wool fibers and secrete lysosomal enzy...

Objective: The main function of the human eye is to detect light, motion, and color from our surroundings. This information is then processed and translated in the brain as vision. However, what is less known about the eye is its ability to regulate immune function. It is this ocular immune privilege that maintains the eye’s ability collect visual information. The degeneration of immune privile...