INTRODUCTION Periodontitis is a common chronic inflammatory disease. It seems that natural killer (NK) cells play a role in the pathogenesis of periodontitis. KIRs are a family of inhibitory or activating receptors expressed on the surfaces of NK cells and some subpopulations of T lymphocytes. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of KIR genes on the pocket depth (PD) and clinical at...

Abstract Human natural killer (NK) cells are essential for controlling infection, cancer, and fetal development. NK cell functions modulated by interactions between polymorphic inhibitory immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIR) HLA-A, -B, -C ligands expressed on tissue cells. All HLA-C alleles encode a KIR ligand contribute to reproduction immunity. In contrast, only some HLA-A -B they focus By hig...

Ly49 lectin-like receptors and killer cell Ig-like receptors (KIR) are structurally unrelated cell surface glycoproteins that evolved independently to function as diverse NK cell receptors for MHC class I molecules. Comparison of primates and various domesticated animals has shown that species have either a diverse Ly49 or KIR gene family, but not both. In four pinniped species of wild marine c...

In sub-Saharan Africans, maternal mortality is unacceptably high, with >400 deaths per 100,000 births compared with <10 deaths per 100,000 births in Europeans. One-third of the deaths are caused by pre-eclampsia, a syndrome arising from defective placentation. Controlling placentation are maternal natural killer (NK) cells that use killer-cell immunoglobulin-like receptor (KIR) to recognize the...

Polarized expression of the Kir 2.3 channel in renal epithelial cells is influenced by the opposing activities of two different PDZ proteins. Mammalian Lin-7 (mLin-7) directly interacts with Kir 2.3 to coordinate basolateral membrane expression, whereas the tax interacting protein 1 (TIP-1), composed of a single PDZ domain, competes for interaction with mLin-7 and drives Kir 2.3 into the endocy...

Inwardly rectifying K+ (Kir) channels are responsible for maintaining endothelial membrane potential and play a key role in endothelium-dependent vasorelaxation. In this study, we show that endothelial Kir channels are suppressed by hypercholesterolemic levels of lipoproteins in vitro and by serum hypercholesterolemia in vivo. Specifically, exposing human aortic endothelial cells to acetylated ...

RESULTS: All 16 KIR genes known were observed in the Albanian individuals and framework genes (KIR3DL3, KIR3DP1, KIR2DL4, and KIR3DL2) were present in all individuals. The frequencies of other KIR genes were: KIR2DP1 (0.981), KIR2DL1 (1), KIR2DL2 (0.615), KIR2DL3 (0.865), KIR2DL5 (0.414), KIR3DL1 (0.933), KIR2DS1 (0.462), KIR2DS2 (0.606), KIR2DS3 (0.327), KIR2DS4 (0.875), KIR2DS5 (0.298), and K...

Successful allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) depends not only on good HLA match but also on T-cell mediated graft-versus-leukemia (GvL) effect. Natural killer (NK) cells are able to kill malignant cells by receiving activation signal from the killer-cell immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIR) recognizing HLA molecules on a cancer cell. It has been recently reported that the...

Some pygmy chimpanzees (also called Bonobos) give much simpler patterns of hybridization on Southern blotting with killer cell immunoglobulin-like receptor (KIR) cDNA probes than do either humans or common chimpanzees. Characterization of KIRs from pygmy chimpanzees having simple and complex banding patterns identified nine different KIRs, representing seven genes. Five of these genes have orth...

Natural killer (NK) cells are regulated by interactions between polymorphic killer immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIR) and human leukocyte antigens (HLA). Genotypic combinations of KIR3DS1/L1 and HLA Bw4-80I were previously shown to influence HIV-1 disease progression, however other KIR genes have not been well studied. In this study, we analyzed the influence of all activating and inhibitory K...