RAD51, a multifunctional protein, plays a central role in DNA replication and homologous recombination repair, and is known to be involved in cancer development. We identified a novel role for RAD51 in innate immune response signaling. Defects in RAD51 lead to the accumulation of self-DNA in the cytoplasm, triggering a STING-mediated innate immune response after replication stress and DNA damag...

Pulmonary infectious diseases cause significant morbidity and mortality in both industrialized and developing countries. Adaptive immune responses are required to defend the lung against pathogens that survive in normal macrophages and extracellular organisms that evade phagocytosis. Microbes initiate both innate immune responses and specific adaptive immune responses. Innate immune response mo...

The mammalian immune system is a complex network of many cell types and proteins that collectively coordinate a protective response against foreign entities. The immune system can be divided into two broad categories: innate and adaptive immunity. Adaptive immunity, which is primarily mediated by T and B lymphocytes, first arose in jawed vertebrates and has several distinct features from the mo...

Introduction In vitro and animal studies have shown that hypoxia and hyperoxia influence the innate immune response. Therefore, hypoxia and hyperoxia could be cheap, non-pharmacological, non-invasive treatment modalities to modulate inflammatory conditions. Hypoxia has shown to exert pro-inflammatory effects, supposedly mediated by the transcription factor hypoxia inducible factor 1a (HIF1a), w...

Tuberculosis (TB) remains a serious global public health problem that results in up to 2 million deaths each year. TB is caused by the human pathogen, Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), which infects primarily innate immune cells patrolling the lung. Innate immune cells serve as barometers of the immune response against Mtb infection by determining the inflammatory milieu in the lungs and promot...

The severity of urinary tract infection (UTI) reflects the quality and magnitude of the host response. While strong local and systemic innate immune activation occurs in patients with acute pyelonephritis, the response to asymptomatic bacteriuria (ABU) is low. The immune response repertoire in ABU has not been characterized, due to the inherent problem to distinguish bacterial differences from ...

The innate immune response is the first line of defense against microbial infections. Innate immunity is made up of the surface barrier, cellular immunity and humoral immunity. In newborn, immunologic function and demands are different to adults. Neonatal innate immunity specifically suppresses Th1-type immune responses, and not Th2-type immune responses, which are enhanced. And the impaired re...

dendritic cells (dcs) are antigen presenting cells with unique capability to take up and process antigens in the peripheral blood and tissues. they subsequently migrate to draining lymph nodes where they present these antigens and stimulate naive t lympho-cytes. during their life cycle, dcs go through two maturation stages and are referred to as immature and mature cells, respectively. while im...

The innate immune system provides many ways to quickly resist infection. The two best-studied defenses in dendritic cells (DCs) are the production of protective cytokines-like interleukin (IL)-12 and type I interferons-and the activation and expansion of innate lymphocytes. IL-12 and type I interferons influence distinct steps in the adaptive immune response of lymphocytes, including the polari...

Dendritic cells (DCs) are antigen presenting cells with unique capability to take up and process antigens in the peripheral blood and tissues. They subsequently migrate to draining lymph nodes where they present these antigens and stimulate naive T lympho-cytes. During their life cycle, DCs go through two maturation stages and are referred to as immature and mature cells, respectively. While im...