The recognition of a wide diversity of antigens by lymphocytes is made possible by the expression of a large range of highly variable antigen specific receptors, coded for by tandem arrays of genes, which undergo rearrangement during T- and B-cell development. The study of T-cell receptor (TCR) d ...

T-cell apoptosis is central to the resolution of chronic inflammation. Inhibition of this process of programmed cell death contributes to disease persistence in conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis. An understanding of T-cell apoptosis and its regulation is clearly important f ...

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a description of classical symptoms that can be grouped together to be recognized as a common entity. However, the disease is more heterogeneous and is likely composed of many different, distinct diseases (1). This heterogeneity is of two types. First, the disease can ...

Collagen-induced arthritis in mice has been widely used to address questions of disease pathogenesis and to validate therapeutic targets for human rheumatoid arthritis. Arthritis is normally observed about 3 wk after immunization with autologous or heterologous type II collagen ...

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a polygenic and multifactorial disease. Many complex immunological and genetic interactions are involved in the final out come of the clinical disease. To understand the various disease pathways operating during the disease course, we need many different ...

Collagen-Induced Arthritis (CIA) is a complex model of autoimmune-mediated arthritis that is regulated by multiple genetic and environmental factors. CIA is induced in rats by immunization with native type II collagen and develops joint pathology similar to that of rheumatoid arthr ...

Type XI collagen (CXI) and cartilage oligomeric matrix protein (COMP) are minor components in cartilage, shown to be arthritogenic. CXI is a heterotrimeric triple helical fibrillar collagen and intermingled in the collagen fibers with type II (CII). COMP is the major noncollagenous prot ...

Antigen induced arthritis is a unilateral T-cell driven model caused by direct injection of an antigen into the knee joint of a FCA preimmunized animal. The chronicity is determined by antigen retention in avascular structures of the joint through charge mediated binding or antibody media ...

A chronic relapsing arthritis develops after a single subcutaneous injection of small amounts of pristane; the pristane induced arthritis (PIA) model in the rat. PIA is characterized by a sudden onset of disease 2 wk after induction. The main pathological features of PIA include edema accomp ...

Mice expressing the KRN T cell receptor transgene and the MHC class II molecule Ag7 (K/B�N mice) develop severe inflammatory arthritis, and serum from these mice causes similar arthritis in a wide range of mouse strains, owing to pathogenic autoantibodies to glucose-6-phosphate isomerase ...

Osteoarthritis (OA) is characterised by progressive erosion of articular cartilage with a number of associated degenerative processes within the joint. Animal models of OA provide the only feasible way to systematically study the development and progression of OA, in order to unders ...

In the last decade, the analysis of gene expression in tissues and cells has evolved from the analysis of a selected set of genes to an efficient high throughput whole-genome screening approach of potentially all genes expressed. Development of sophisticated methodologies such as microa ...

Differential display is one of the simplest techniques for discovering novel transcripts when comparing gene expression in biological systems. The method can be carried out on small amounts of total RNA and permits the simultaneous comparison of multiple independent samples in a sing ...

Two-dimensional electrophoresis (2DE) is a powerful method for separation of complex mixtures of proteins. The standard procedure is not, however, well suited to analysis of articular cartilage, which contains high concentrations of proteoglycans, the polyanionic glycosami ...

The pathological importance of tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is now widely accepted. Ex vivo data from synovial cell cultures suggest that direct cell contact between activated T-cells and macrophages may be an important driver of macrophage TNF-α producti ...

Phage display has represented a phenomenal technological advance of the last two decades. This technique is a very effective way of producing large numbers (up to 1012) of diverse peptides and proteins (including antibodies), presented as fusion proteins on the viral capsid, that can be used f ...

Methods for high efficiency gene transfer into primary cells of various lineages and disease states are desirable, as they remove the uncertainties associated with using transformed cell lines. Adenoviruses have evolved to deliver their genes into cells with high efficiency and in rec ...

As the result of its apparent structural and histological simplicity, adipose tissue (AT) functions initially were limited to energy storage, insulation, and thermoregulation. Only decades later was the extraordinarily dynamic role of AT recognized, revealing its participati ...

Adipose tissue synthesizes factors involved in the body's homeostasis. Thus, measurements of messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) concentrations are important to study the involvement of adipose tissue in various physiological and pathophysiological conditions, in partic ...

When isolated from tissue, white adipose cells are round, and their interior is filled with a large (80–120 μm) droplet of stored triglyceride, leaving a thin (1–2-μm) layer of cytoplasm between the lipid droplet and the plasma membrane. Their three-dimensional architecture, together with t ...