Background
Lipoarabinomannan is a lipoglycan and major virulence factor in the bacteria genus Mycobacterium. In addition to serving as a major cell wall component, it is thought to serve as a modulin with immunoregulatory and anti-inflammatory effects. This allows the bacterium maintain survival in the human reservoir by undermining host resistance and acquired immune responses. These mechanisms include the inhibition of T-cell proliferation and of macrophage microbicidal activity via diminished IFN-γ response. Additional functions of lipoarabinommanan are thought to include the neutralization of cytotoxic oxygen free radicals produced by macrophages, inhibition of protein kinase C, and induction of early response genes.
Read more about this topic: Lipoarabinomannan
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)