Protein-Protein Interactions: Pathophysiological and Therapeutic Aspects: Volume II by Krishna Mohan Poluri & Khushboo Gulati & Deepak Kumar Tripathi & Nupur Nagar

Author:Krishna Mohan Poluri & Khushboo Gulati & Deepak Kumar Tripathi & Nupur Nagar
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789819924233
Publisher: Springer Nature Singapore

5.2.4 Immune Responses Against Infection

The host immune system triggers a complex array of responses to maintain the homeostasis as well as eliminate pathogenic microorganisms and allergens. The activity of foreign agents is under constant surveillance of the immune system and systematically eliminated from the body with no or minimal damage to self-tissues. Due to the presence of a diverse number of pathogens in the environment, the eradication of microbes takes place through several broad as well as detailed selection mechanisms. Together with physical barriers, all immune responses can be categorized into two classes namely, innate immune responses and adaptive immune responses. The innate immunity is the first line of defense mechanisms and acts rapidly on pathogens by recognition of biomolecules (Turvey and Broide 2010). While adaptive immunity acts upon specific microbes, toxins, or allergens. During adaptive immune response, the responding cells proliferate once they encounter an antigen for an effective response. Further, the adaptive response manifests immune memory, i.e., it generates cells which are long-lived and can remain in dormant state for a long time so that any recurrence of infection is eliminated with an effective and much more sensitized feedback. These immune effector mechanisms exhibit self-tolerance while acting upon microbial cells. However, in case of viruses, intracellular bacteria and intracellular parasites, the immune system is obliged to destroy self-tissues which sometimes leads to a severe autoimmune response and damage to the host body. In order to distinguish between infected and healthy cells, various immune response mechanisms have evolved. One of the important mechanisms is the T-cell arm of the immune response. The T-cell acts upon infected cells of host tissue by recognizing and differentiating between foreign and self-antigens present in the lipid bilayer of cells (Chaplin 2010).

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