Читать книгу Immunology - Richard Coico - Страница 64

Most microorganisms encountered daily in the life of a healthy individual are detected and destroyed within minutes to hours by innate defense mechanisms. Mechanistically, innate immunity is carried out by nonspecific physical and chemical barriers (e.g., the skin, acid pH or the stomach), cellular barriers (e.g., phagocytes), and molecular pattern‐based reactions. This section describes the latter mechanism, which is used by a phylogenetically diverse set of species (fish, fruit flies, mammals) to enable host defense systems to detect the presence of foreign antigens that may do harm: the pattern recognition receptors. Based on their molecular structure, PRRs can be divided into multiple families, including TLRs, C‐type lectin receptors, NOD‐like receptors, and RIG‐I‐like receptors.