Peptidoglycans (PGNs) are ubiquitous constituents of bacterial cell walls and exhibit various immunobiological activities. Two types of minimum essential PGN structures for immunobiological activities were chemically synthesized and designated as muramyldipeptide; N-acetylmuramyl-L-alanyl-D-isoglutamine (MDP) and gamma-D-glutamyl-meso-diaminopimelic acid (iE-DAP), which are common constituents ...

Sexually transmitted infections increase the likelihood of HIV-1 transmission. We investigated the effect of Neisseria gonorrheae (gonococcus [GC]) exposure on HIV replication in primary resting CD4(+) T cells, a major HIV target cell during the early stage of sexual transmission of HIV. GC and TLR2 agonists, such as peptidylglycan (PGN), Pam(3)CSK(4), and Pam(3)C-Lip, a GC-derived synthetic li...

Toll-like receptors (TLRs) recognize molecular constituents of pathogens and activate host innate immune responses. TLR2 responds to Gram-positive organisms and components of their cell walls. TLR3 responds to double-stranded RNA (an intermediate in viral replication). A mouse macrophage cell line (RAW 264.7) and freshly obtained mouse peritoneal macrophages were treated in tissue culture for 5...

Previous studies have demonstrated that soyasaponin (SoSa) possesses anti-inflammatory properties in lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stimulated immune cells by influencing the immune sensing of toll-like receptor (TLR) 4. The aim of this study was to investigate the immune modulatory effect of SoSa I on TLR2- and TLR4-induced inflammation within the monocytic MUTZ-3-cell model. MUTZ-3 cells were stimu...

PURPOSE NOD2 plays an important role in the recognition of intracellular bacteria through its ability to sense the components of bacterial peptidoglycan (PGN), namely muramyl dipeptide (MDP) and muramyl tripeptide (MTP). Specific mutations in the human NOD2 gene cause Blau syndrome, an autosomal dominant form of uveitis, arthritis, and dermatitis. As a first step toward understanding the role o...

Background: Organic dust exposure in agricultural environments induces an inflammatory response that attenuates over time, yet repetitive dust exposures result in chronic lung diseases. Animalmodels resembling this chronic lung inflammatory response have been developed, yet the underlying cellular mechanisms are not well defined. Objective: Because mice repetitively exposed to organic dust extr...

A major obstacle to therapy in intensive care units is sepsis caused by severe infection. In recent years gram-positive (G+) bacteria, most commonly staphylococci, are thought to be the main pathogens. Micheliolide (MCL) was demonstrated to provide a therapeutic role in rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory intestinal disease, colitis-associated cancer, and lipopolysaccharide (LPS, the main compon...

Prevention and treatment of myopia is an important public problem worldwide. We found a higher incidence of myopia among patients with inflammatory diseases such as type 1 diabetes mellitus (7.9%), uveitis (3.7%), or systemic lupus erythematosus (3.5%) compared to those without inflammatory diseases (p<0.001) using data from children (<18years old) in the National Health Insurance Research data...

Thalamocortical and perigeniculate (PGN) neurons can generate action potentials either as Ca2+ spike-mediated high-frequency bursts or as tonic trains. Using dual intracellular recordings in vitro in monosynaptically connected pairs of PGN and dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (LGNd) neurons, we found that the functional effect of synaptic transmission between these cell types was strongly infl...

In a wireless sensor network (WSN), a large number of sensor nodes have to collect and forward data hop-by-hop to a sink. This paper presents an adaptive data collection (ADC) scheme with dynamic grid-length adjustments for mobile sinks in a grid-based WSN. In the proposed ADC, a mobile sink collects data along the Xand Y-axis of the grid. Due to simultaneous collections of multiple mobile sink...