Fish is a heterogeneous group of different organisms which include the agnathans (hagfishes and lampreys), condryctians (sharks and rays) and teleosteans (bony fish). Like in all vertebrates, fish have cellular and humoral immune responses, and central organs whose the main function is involved in immune defence. Fish and mammals show some similarities and some differences regarding immune func...

The Immune System (IS) constitutes the defence mechanism of higher level organisms to micro organismic threats. It is genuinely distributed system comprising mechanisms of adaptation to unknown threats by means of the cooperation of heterogenous autonomous entities, whose interaction endows the overall system with learning capabilities. This paper describes how a Multi Agent approach, and more ...

The Immune System (IS) constitutes the defence mechanism of higher level organisms to micro organismic threats. It is genuinely distributed system comprising mechanisms of adaptation to unknown threats by means of the cooperation of heterogenous autonomous entities, whose interaction endows the overall system with learning capabilities. This paper describes how a Multi Agent approach, and more ...

Extracts from the gum resin of Boswellia serrata and some of is constituents including boswellic acids affect the immune system in different ways. Among the various boswellic acids 11-keto-beta-boswellic acid (KBA) and acetyl-11-keto-beta-boswellic acid have been observed to be active. However, also other boswellic acids may exhibit actions in the immune system. In the humoral defence system a ...

Plants are host to a large amount of pathogenic bacteria. Fire blight, caused by the bacterium Erwinia amylovora, is an important disease in Rosaceae. Pathogenicity of E. amylovora is greatly influenced by the production of exopolysaccharides, such as amylovoran, and the use of the type III secretion system, which enables bacteria to penetrate host tissue and cause disease. When infection takes...

The NADPH oxidase was originally identified as a key component of human innate host defence. In phagocytes, this enzyme complex is activated to produce superoxide anion and other secondarily derived ROS (reactive oxygen species), which promote killing of invading micro-organisms. However, it is now well-established that NADPH oxidase and related enzymes also participate in important cellular pr...

Inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) gene expresses a calcium calmudolin-independent enzyme which can catalyse NO production from L-arginine. The induction of iNOS activity has been demonstrated in a wide variety of cell types under stimulation with cytokines and lipopoly saccharide (LPS). Previous studies indicated that all nitric oxide synthases (NOS) activated in human umbilical vein endot...

BACKGROUND To investigate the cardiotoxic role of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and of products derived from catecholamines auto-oxidation, we studied: (1) the response of antioxidant cardiac cellular defence systems to oxidative stress induced by norepinephrine (NE) administration, (2) the effect of NE administration on cardiac beta1-adrenergic receptors by means of receptor binding assay, (3)...

Over the years, due to rapid technological progress, radiation from man-made sources exceeded that of natural origin. There is a general concern regarding a growing number of appliances that use radiofrequency/ microwave (RF/MW) radiation with particular emphasis on mobile communication systems. Since nonthermal biological effects and mechanisms of RF/MW radiation are still uncertain, laborator...