Molecular mimicry between microbial antigens and host tissue forms an attractive hypothetical mechanism for the triggering of autoimmune disease by preceding infections. Recent crucial reviews state that molecular mimicry, as the causative mechanism, remains unproven for any human autoimmune disease. However, the peripheral neuropathy Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) is largely overseen in this de...

It is widely known that individuals frequently imitate each other in social situations and that such mimicry fulfills an important social role in the sense that it functions as a social glue. With reference to the anticipated action effect, it has recently been demonstrated that individuals do not only imitate others, but also engage in anticipated action before the observed person starts engag...

Molecular mimicry is considered as a mechanism by which infectious pathogens may break immunological tolerance and cause autoimmune disease. It implicates that peptides shared between pathogen and host may induce cross-reactive immune reactions. According to this hypothesis, the resulting autoimmune response actually represents a secondary immune response. It is mediated by cross-reactive T cel...

Two studies were conducted to assess the influence of emotional context and social context, in terms of gender and status, on speaker expressivity and observer mimicry in a dyadic interactive setting. For Study 1, 96 same sex dyads and for Study 2, 72 mixed sex dyads participated in a social sharing paradigm. The results showed that in both same sex and mixed sex dyads women smile more than men...

During face-to-face interpersonal interaction people have a tendency to mimic each other, that is, they change their own behaviors to adjust to the behavior expressed by a partner. In this paper we describe how behavioral information expressed between two interlocutors can be used to detect and identify mimicry and improve recognition of interrelationship and affect between them in a conversati...

In leptospirosis, as in other infections, the trigger of ACL production remains elusive. Are ACL induced by the release of endothelial cryptic autoantigens, or by cross reactivity, or by an hypothetical leptospire superantigen? Indeed, infections are reported as precipitating conditions of the catastrophic antiphospholipid syndrome, supposedly by a mechanism of molecular mimicry. However, studi...

The tephritid fly Zonosemata vittigera (Coquillett) has a leg-like pattern on its wings and a wing-waving display that together mimic the agonistic territorial displays of jumping spiders (Salticidae). Zonosemata flies initiate this display when stalked by jumping spiders, causing the spiders to display back and retreat. Wing transplant experiments showed that both the wing pattern and wing-wav...

The experiments from which this database contains the recordings, were conducted with the aim of the analysis of human interaction, in particular mimicry, and elaborate on the theoretical hypotheses of the relationship between the occurrence of mimicry and human affect. The recorded experiments are designed to explore this relationship. The corpus is recorded with 18 synchronised audio and vide...

Ribosome recycling factor (RRF) disassembles posttermination complexes in conjunction with elongation factor EF-G, liberating ribosomes for further rounds of translation. The striking resemblance of its L-shaped structure to that of tRNA has suggested that the mode of action of RRF may be based on mimicry of tRNA. Directed hydroxyl radical probing of 16S and 23S rRNA from Fe(II) tethered to ten...

Mimicry, like coral snakes and their nonvenomous imposters, is one of the most compelling examples of evolution by natural selection. Although mostly known from animals that gain protection by resembling an unpalatable or harmful compatriot, both types of mimicry, Müllerian and Batesian, also occur in plants and fungi. Some fungi are known to mimic flowers to dupe pollinators into vectoring spo...