6533b82afe1ef96bd128cb3e

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Biosynthesis of the Collagen-like C1q Molecule and its Receptor Functions for Fc and Polyanionic Molecules on Macrophages

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description

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, knowledge of immunity was limited to a few practical methods based on empirical observations, e.g., the observation by Jenner in 1798 that inoculation with cowpox material induced an immunity to smallpox. The discoveries by Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch that microorganisms caused fermentations and were responsible for a number of infectious diseases, greatly advanced the concepts of susceptibility and immunity in a limited number of diseases. In the late nineteenth century, the complement system was discovered by Fodor(1887), Nuttall(1888), and Buchner (1889a, b) through studying the bactericidal action of blood serum. It was recognized that killing of bacteria in fresh serum required at least two different substances: a heat-stable (30 min, 56 °C) factor, today known to be the antibody specific for the particular microorganism; and a heat-labile factor, which was normally present in each serum. This factor was at first termed “alexine” (Buchner 1889a, b) and later designated “complement” (Pfeiffer and Issaeff 1894; Bordet 1896). On 18 May 1889, Buchner made the following Statement at a lecture in Munich: “Das Vorhandensein bakterienfeindlicher Wirkungen durch flussige Bestandthile der Korpersafte lasst die uberall nachweisbare Thatigkeit der Phagozyten als weniger ausschlaggebend erkennen” (The presence of bactericidal action in body fluids reveals the overall detectable activity of phagocytes as less decisive). This statement by the chief advocate of the humoral theory of resistance to microbial infections was directed against the cellular theory of immunity proposed by Metchnikoff. In his answer to Buchner’s critique, Metchnikoff (1889; English translation 1905) came to the conclusion, based on his own work, that “the postulates of this theory are often not in accord with the real facts,” and that the bactericidal effect of body fluids has nothing in common with the phenomenon of immunity („la propriete bactericide des humeurs ne correspond nullement aux phenomenes de l’immunite“).