Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School and Blavatnik Institute, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, United States.
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142, United States.
J Am Chem Soc. 2022 Feb 16;144(6):2474-2478. doi: 10.1021/jacs.1c12202. Epub 2022 Feb 7.
The human immune system detects potentially pathogenic microbes with receptors that respond to microbial metabolites. While the overall immune signaling pathway is known in considerable detail, the initial molecular signals, the microbially produced immunogens, for important diseases like Lyme disease (LD) are often not well-defined. The immunogens for LD are produced by the spirochete , and a galactoglycerolipid () has been identified as a key trigger for the inflammatory immune response that characterizes LD. This report corrects the original structural assignment of to , a change of an α-galactopyranose to an α-galactofuranose headgroup. The seemingly small change has important implications for the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of LD.
人体免疫系统利用能够识别微生物代谢产物的受体来检测潜在的致病微生物。尽管人们对整体免疫信号通路有了相当详细的了解，但对于莱姆病（LD）等重要疾病的初始分子信号，即微生物产生的免疫原，通常还没有明确的定义。LD 的免疫原由螺旋体产生，一种半乳糖甘油脂质（）已被确定为引发 LD 炎症免疫反应的关键触发因素。本报告纠正了 最初的结构分配，将α-半乳糖吡喃糖基改变为α-半乳糖呋喃糖基头部基团。这个看似微小的变化对 LD 的诊断、预防和治疗具有重要意义。
