The gene encoding streptococcal mitogenic exotoxin Z (SMEZ) was disrupted in Streptococcus pyogenes. Despite the presence of other superantigen genes, mitogenic responses in human and murine HLA-DQ transgenic cells were abrogated when cells were stimulated with supernatant from the smez(-) mutant compared with the parent strain. Remarkably, disruption of smez led to a complete inability to elic...

BACKGROUND Patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) have an increased risk of celiac disease (CD). Both diseases have a common genetic susceptibility locus in the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) class II alleles. Testing for tissue transglutaminase antibodies (anti-tTG) is highly accurate for a CD diagnosis. OBJECTIVE To determine the frequency of HLA-DQB1*0201/02 and DQB1*0302 alleles and...

Disulfide reduction is an important step in antigen processing for HLA class II restricted T cell responses. Migration inhibitory factor (MIF) is a member of the thioredoxin family and has been classically defined as a cytokine. Using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and CD analysis, here we describe the binding to MIF of two peptides, hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) and insulin B (InsB) w...

A link between celiac disease and schizophrenia has been postulated for several years, based primarily on reports of elevated levels of antibody to gliadin in patients. We sought to examine the proposed connection between schizophrenia and celiac disease by characterizing the molecular specificity and mechanism of the anti-gliadin immune response in a subset of individuals with schizophrenia. B...

Using single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), we sought to predict classical class I and class II human leukocyte antigen (HLA) alleles, and test for their associations with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in the North American Rheumatoid Arthritis Consortium sample of cases and controls, genotyped on the Illumina HumanHap550 BeadChip. We use publicly available databases of SNP data and HLA data to f...

Staphylococcus aureus is capable of causing a spectrum of human illnesses. During serious S. aureus infections, the staphylococcal pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) such as peptidoglycan, lipoteichoic acid, and lipoproteins and even intact S. aureus, are believed to act in conjunction with the staphylococcal superantigens (SSAg) to activate the innate and adaptive immune system, re...

T issue transglutaminase (TG2) is one of a family of enzymes that covalently crosslink proteins by binding a glutamine in one protein with a lysine in another [1]. There is strong evidence that links the deregulated expression of TG2 to a variety of diseases, and although the exact role of TG2 in neurodegenerative diseases is unclear [2], in celiac disease (CD), TG2 catalyses the formation of i...