Abstract
Like many other pathogens of medical importance, pathogenic Leptospira employ diverse strategies to circumvent Complement System activation. Under physiological conditions, this central humoral arm of innate immunity is tightly controlled by negative Complement regulatory proteins. However, upon infection, pathogenic microorganisms interfere with normal Complement host defense mechanisms by recruiting or mimicking Complement regulators and by secreting endogenous proteases or acquiring host’s proteases that inactivate key Complement components. In this chapter, we describe in detail some of the most frequently used assays to evaluate Leptospira Complement resistance.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) grants # 2017/12924-3 (LI and ASB) and 2018/12896-2 (ASB) and the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) grants # 307780/2017-1 (LI) and 305114/2017-4 (ASB).
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Isaac, L., Barbosa, A.S. (2020). Complement Resistance Assays. In: Koizumi, N., Picardeau, M. (eds) Leptospira spp.. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2134. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-0459-5_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-0459-5_17
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