Current Protein and Peptide Science - Volume 7, Issue 4, 2006

I would like to thank Prof. Ben M. Dunn, Editor in Chief of CPPS, for supporting my proposal in organizing this special issue on Immune receptors for glycoconjugates. The aim of this issue is to highlight the rapid progress in our understanding of glycoconjugate-mediated communication in the context of immune responses. Only after this project was completed did I recognize what a precious chance it was for me to serve the c Read More

Human C-type lectin receptors (CLRs) characteristically bind glycosylated ligands in a Ca2+-dependent way via their carbohydrate recognition domain (CRD). Their carbohydrate preference is dependent on the amino acid sequence in the CRD domain and on the ability and flexibility of the CRD domain to accommodate sugar moieties that are located at different distances from each other in the glycoconjugate. Although mi Read More

Adaptive humoral immunity to extracellular bacteria is largely mediated by antibody specific for both protein and polysaccharide antigens. Proteins and polysaccharides are biochemically distinct, and as a result are processed differently by the immune system, leading to different mechanistic pathways for eventual elicitation of specific Ig isotypes. Much of our current knowledge concerning the parameters underlying anti-prot Read More

Until about 1990 there was general consent about the assumption that only protein and peptide antigens have the capacity of CD4+ or CD8+ T-cell stimulation. Since about ten years evidence is now accumulating that carbohydratepeptide epitopes do play a role in classical MHC-mediated immune responses. This holds true for glycopeptides, where the glycan chain is short and not located at an "anchor residue " needed fo Read More

Approximately half of the molecular mass of gp120, the receptor-binding envelope protein of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), consists of N-linked glycans. Nearly half of these glycans are of the high mannose type. These high mannose glycans furnish a rich forest of mannose residues on the virus surface making HIV a prime target for interaction with mannose-specific lectins of the immune system. This review focuses Read More

The mechanistic studies on immune recognition of carbohydrates have been paved by the synergized advances in identifying the precise sugar structures recognized by the immune system, in analyzing the cellular and humoral components bearing the receptors for glycoconjugates, and production of the biological relevant carbohydrate epitopes by synthetic chemistry. In our current studies on natural antigenic glycolipids Read More

The exchange of information between cells represents an important regulatory mechanism for cellular activities. Such regulation processes mainly occur by hydrophilic compounds, unable to penetrate the cell membrane. Accordingly such signals have to be transmitted into the cell that is performed by transmembrane receptors. The widespread group of G-protein coupled receptors plays a decisive role in extracellular sig Read More

Rho proteins belong to the Ras superfamily of small GTPases and function as binary switches that shuttle between active and inactive states based on the nature of bound guanine nucleotide. Three sets of regulatory proteins, namely, guanine dissociation inhibitors, guanine exchange factors, and GTPase activating proteins (GAPs) control the balance between active and inactive Rho proteins. There are more than 70 RhoGAPs Read More