Enteroviruses are positive stranded RNA viruses belonging to the genus Enterovirus of the Picornaviridae family. Human enteroviruses are transmitted through the fecal–oral route and have been shown to cause mild to life-threatening diseases. Various diagnostic methods have be ...

Global incidence of dengue has increased considerably over the past decade. Dengue fever (DF) is a self-limiting disease; however, dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) and dengue shock syndrome (DSS) are fatal. Since there is no therapy and vaccine against dengue, timely diagnosis is therefore n ...

Human caliciviruses, noroviruses in particular, are a common cause of gastroenteritis in persons of all age groups. Although both antigen detection and serologic methods for diagnosis of infection with these viruses have been described, the best and most common methods used for diagnos ...

The innate immune system has evolved to detect microbes and sterile tissue damage with the help of a series of signaling receptors. One key strategy is to detect infectious microbes or host cell damage by recognizing nucleic acids that are modified or appear in compartment normally devoid of nuc ...

Numerous immune receptors have the ability to mediate phagocytosis of large particles by triggering dynamic local rearrangement of the cytoskeleton and cell membrane. Different receptors can be differentially recruited to sites of particle binding, which in turn can have importa ...

Single-particle tracking (SPT) using fluorescent quantum dots (QDs) provides high-resolution spatial–temporal information on receptor dynamics that cannot be obtained through traditional biochemical techniques. In particular, the high brightness and photostabil ...

Nod1 and Nod2 are pattern recognition receptors of the mammalian innate immune system. They respond to bacterial peptidoglycan fragments and are implicated in host defense against a variety of �different bacterial pathogens. Recent studies furthermore support additional func ...

Many immunological responses are often regulated by cell surface receptors in cell–cell recognition events. Such immune receptors on the cell surface typically exhibit low-affinity and fast-kinetic ligand interactions (e.g., K d in the μM range, k off  =  10−2 to 20 s−1). Real-time surface plasm ...

NKT cells are a distinct lineage of T lymphocytes that are usually identified by the co-expression of the semi-invariant CD1d-restricted αβ TCR and the NK1.1 allelic marker of NK lineage receptors in the C57BL/6 mice and related strains. NKT cells can be subdivided based on CD4/CD8 expression and on ...

Stimulation of B cells not only through the B cell antigen receptor (BCR) but also through Toll-like receptors (TLRs) can drive activation, proliferation, and differentiation of B cells to result in antigen-specific antibody secretion. In addition, B cells are co-stimulated by specific a ...

This chapter describes a method to generate plasma membrane sheets that are large enough to visualize the membrane architecture and perform quantitative analyses of protein distributions. This procedure places the sheets on electron microscopy grids, parallel to the imaging plane ...

The coordinated effort of cells in the immune system relies heavily on surface receptor interactions. Immune receptor mobility provides vital information on the function and responses of immune cells, and these measurements shed light on their interactions with other membrane, cyt ...

Fractalkine (CX3CL1) is a membrane-anchored chemokine whose N-terminus contains a unique CX3C motif that is cleaved and released. The membrane-bound form functions as an adhesion molecule and the secreted form as a chemotactic factor. Like other chemokines, CX3CL1 is regulated at the le ...

Recombinant fusion proteins incorporating experimental protein domains fused to immunoglobulin Fc regions have become widely utilized in studies of protein–ligand interactions. The advantages of these systems include an inherent increase in avidity provided by the multim ...

Scavenger receptors (SRs) are structurally diverse but functionally related innate immune receptors involved in defence and clearance mechanisms. Their broad specificity relies on evolutionarily conserved pattern recognition domains which interact with a variety of mic ...

The variable lymphocyte receptors (VLRs) of lamprey and hagfish comprise leucine-rich repeat modules, instead of the immunoglobulin-like domain building blocks of antibodies and T-cell receptors in jawed vertebrates. Both types of vertebrate-rearranging antigen recepto ...

In order to execute their immune functions, leukocytes interact with a broad range of cell types through cell surface receptors, such as those of the immunoglobulin and C-type lectin families, or indirectly through soluble factors. The characterization of activating and inhibitory co ...

Genome sequences are quickly being generated from a variety of organisms and provide researchers with an abundance of previously inaccessible information and an important source of insight into immune mechanisms. There are a variety of methods to accurately characterize genes from ...

The secondary immunoglobulin gene diversification processes, somatic hypermutation (SHM), immunoglobulin gene conversion (GCV), and class switch recombination, are important for efficient humoral immune responses. They require the action of activation-induced cyti ...

Understanding the transcriptome, defined as the complete transcriptional component of the genome, is far more complex than originally considered. Even with the near fully resolved human and mouse genomes, for which extensive databases of transcribed sequence data (e.g., expressed ...