Taxonomic group: fungi /
Organ / tissue: cell wall
NCBI PubMed ID: 31807896Publication DOI: 10.1007/82_2019_184Journal NLM ID: 0110513Publisher: Heidelberg: Springer Verlag
Correspondence: andrew.alspaugh
duke.edu
Institutions: Department of Medicine, Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, USA, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Tulane University School of Medicine, New Orleans, USA
Chitin and chitosan are two related polysaccharides that provide important structural stability to fungal cell walls. Often embedded deeply within the cell wall structure, these molecules anchor other components at the cell surface. Chitin-directed organization of the cell wall layers allows the fungal cell to effectively monitor and interact with the external environment. For fungal pathogens, this interaction includes maintaining cellular strategies to avoid excessive detection by the host innate immune system. In turn, mammalian and plant hosts have developed their own strategies to process fungal chitin, resulting in chitin fragments of varying molecular size. The size-dependent differences in the immune activation behaviors of variably sized chitin molecules help to explain how chitin and related chitooligomers can both inhibit and activate host immunity. Moreover, chitin and chitosan have recently been exploited for many biomedical applications, including targeted drug delivery and vaccine development.
Structure type: homopolymer
Location inside paper: Fig. 1, a
Trivial name: chitin
Compound class: O-polysaccharide, cell wall polysaccharide, glucan, polysaccharide, chitin
Contained glycoepitopes: IEDB_135813,IEDB_137340,IEDB_141807,IEDB_151531,IEDB_153212,IEDB_241099,IEDB_423114,IEDB_423150,SB_74,SB_85
Biological activity: introducing chitin to the host through either an intranasal or intraperitoneal route of infection results in priming of the immune system, suggesting that many of the host immune cells, such as alveolar macrophages and NK cells, are ''preactivated'' to elicit a response due to the immune-modulatory effects of chitin and its derivatives. Chitin microparticles were able to alter the Th2-mediated allergic responses in models of ovalbumin-induced asthma and A. fumigatus-induced allergic sensitivity. Chitin has also been shown to elicit a direct allergic response in the airways characterized by increases in tissue eosinophils and basophils, as well as elevated expression of the Th2 cytokine, IL-4. IL-17, a pro-inflammatory cytokine, was increased in expression and activity in murine lung macrophages that had been exposed to chitin. Chitin was able to elicit activation of skin cells in a manner characterized by the induction of TLR4, both at the transcript and protein level. Blocking TLR2 in the keratinocytes inhibited this induction
Related record ID(s): 40760, 40800, 41831, 49862, 50302, 50305, 50307, 50309, 50312, 50313, 50316, 50318, 111874, 121703, 131817, 139821, 143656, 147987, 149876
NCBI Taxonomy refs (TaxIDs): 4751Reference(s) to other database(s): GTC:G97099AY, CCSD:
46067, CBank-STR:5851, GenDB:KF905651
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