Innate immune response plays a critical role in controlling invading pathogens, but such an immune response must be tightly regulated. Insufficient or overactivated immune responses may lead to harmful or even fatal consequences. To dissect the complex host-parasite interactions and the molecular mechanisms underlying innate immune responses to infections, here we investigate the role of FOS-li...

Tumor necrosis factor superfamily ligands and receptors are responsible for development, immunity, and homeostasis of metazoan organisms. Thus, it is not surprising that signals emanating from these receptors are tightly regulated. Binding of TNF-related weak inducer of apoptosis (TWEAK) to its cognate receptor, FN14, triggers the assembly of receptor-associated signaling complex, which allows ...

The recognition of nucleic acids by the innate immune system during viral infection results in the production of type I interferons and the activation of antiviral immune responses. The RNA helicases RIG-I and MDA-5 recognize distinct types of cytosolic RNA species and signal through the mitochondrial protein MAVS to stimulate the phosphorylation and activation of the transcription factors IRF3...

The peripheral innate immune response to West Nile virus (WNV) is crucial for control of virus spread to the central nervous system. Therefore, transcriptomes encoding the innate immune response proteins against WNV were investigated in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of New Zealand White rabbits, a recently established novel rabbit model for WNV pathogenesis studies. PBMCs were chal...

During infection with Chlamydia trachomatis, CD8(+) T cells are primed, even though the bacteria remain confined to a host cell vacuole throughout their developmental cycle. Because CD8(+) T cells recognize antigens processed from cytosolic proteins, the Chlamydia antigens recognized by these CD8(+) T cells very likely have access to the host cell cytoplasm during infection. The identity of the...

Anopheles (Anopheles) intermedius and Anopheles (Ano.) mattogrossensis are Brazilian anopheline species belonging to the scarcely studied Anopheles subgenus. Few studies have been done on the genetic differentiation of these species. Both species have been found infected by Plasmodium and are sympatric with other anopheline species from the Nyssorhynchus subgenus. Eighteen enzymatic loci were a...

UNLABELLED Most of the intracellular pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) reside in either the endolysosome or the cytoplasm to sense pathogen-derived RNAs, DNAs, or synthetic analogs of double-stranded RNA (dsRNA), such as poly(I:C). However, it remains elusive whether or not a pathogen-derived protein can function as a cytosolic pathogen-associated molecular pattern (PAMP). In this study, we ...