Innate Immunity Flashcards
What are the hallmarks of Innate Immunity?
- immediate response
- similar response to repeat encounters with a microbe
- respond to invariable structures
- receptors are encoded in the germline
- does not react against the host
What is the role of the epithelial barrier?
Physical barrer, killing microbes by locally produced anti-biotic peptides, killing of microbes and infected cells by intraepithelial lymphocytes
What are the characteristics of neutrophils?
- most abundant leukocyte in the blood, 4 to 10K per microliter, first responder to bacterial and fungal infections, and they ingest and destroy pathogens
- only live for a few hours in tissue
- dead neutrophils form pus
What stimulates neutrophils?
G-CSF
Increaed number of band neutrophils is a sign of what?
Infection
What is Severe Congenital Neutropenia and how is it currently treated?
hereditary disorders with recurrent sever bacterial and fungal infections and sepsis.
- due to dysfunction in neutrophil generation
- marked neutropenia (low neutrophil count)
- current treatment is with G-CSF (the reason you have to stimulate neutropihl production and not just add them is because neutropihls are short lived where G-CSF will produce long acting stimulation. It is possible in another disease a patient could not respond to G-CSF so therefore that therapy would not work.
How can you determine between increaed neutrophil destruction vs. decreased production in the bone marrow.
-if you look at the bone marrow and see lots of band neutrophils then you know there is a problem with destruction and not production
What is the role of monocytes and macrophages in innate immunity?
They ingest and destroy microbes and produce cytokines to regulate other cells. Monocyte turn into macrophage when it enters the tissue. there are 500 to 1000 circulating per microliter of blood
What is the importance of PAMPs
these are structures shared by classes of microbes and are not present in normal cells. These are required for surivival and infectivity of that the pathogenic cell.
What are some examples of PAMPs
- LPS
- Peptidoglycans
- Terminal Mannose Residues
- Unmethylated CG-rich DNA
What does TLR-2 recognize?
TLR-2 = bacterial lipoglycans; peptidoglycans
(these are on the cell surface, while others are in the endosomes)
What does TLR-4 recognize and what is interesting about it?
TLR-4 recognizes LPS both on the cell surface and within the endosomes
What does TLR-5 recognize?
Flagellin
What does TLR-9 recognize?
Unmethylated CpG oligonucleotides
What is the TLF signaling pathway?
Membrane receptor leads to activation of MyD88 that interacts with IRAK/TRAF6 which leads to activation of NF-KappaB. NF-kB creates is a transcript for inflammatory cytokines
What is the NLR pathway (NOD-like Receptors)?
NLRs are within the cell.
NLRP-3 (Inflammasome) activates caspase-1 by cleavage, which will then cleave Pro-IL-1beta to IL-1beta which will activate acute inflammation specifically it is the cytokine that induces fever
What are the way to activate complement?
3 ways
alternative pathway
classical pathway
lectin pathway
What does complement lead to?
Complement is an enzymatic cascade, where activated proteins cleave other proteins and rapidly amplify the signal.
- early step is C3b leads to opsonization of the microbe
- late stage is C5a leads to MAC which will punch holes in the membrane and lead to cell death
What is responsible for the acute phase response? and what is the acute phase response?
The acute phase response is an increase in circulating levels of plasma proteins rapidly with infection. It is stimulated by IL-6 from the macrophages.
- IL-6 from the macrophages induces C-reactive Protein and Collectins
- CRP is a pentraxin with 5 heads that can activate complement, and help opsonization
- Collectins are soluble PRRs
-TNF alpha and IL-1 also help produce the acute phase response and IL-6 is a cytokine made in the liver
What is the function of IL-1 and what is it secreted by?
Secreted by Macrophages and activates acute inflammation especially fever