Abstract
As an important cellular component of the innate immune system, NK cells constitute a first line of defense against various infections and malignancies. Previous studies have reported electroacupuncture (EA) modulation of natural killer cell (NK cell) activities. Our study confirmed that EA treatment increases NK cell activity using 51Cr release assay. Furthermore, in order to better understand the activation mechanism of NK cell by EA, we employed a cDNA microarray technique to elucidate how EA alters gene expressions in the spleen of rats. We screened EA responsive genes using a high-throughput screening and identified 154 genes. Among those genes we selected 4 genes that are known to play a crucial role in NK cell activation and examined their mRNA expressions after EA treatment using RT-PCR. Our data shows that EA treatment increased CD94, PTK and VCAM-1 expressions while decreased PTP and SHP-1. These results imply that EA treatment increase PTK expression, which increases NK cell activity, through induction of CD94 while decreases SHP-1, which inhibits NK cell activity, simultaneously so that it activates NK cell with high efficacy. It seems that increased VCAM-1 expression is due to INF-γ produced by activated NK cell. Increased production of VCAM-1 is expected to play an important role in binding of NK cell to the target cell. The result of our study may provide key insights in understanding the mechanisms of activation of NK cell induced by EA. © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Author keywords
Electroacupuncture; NK cell; PTK; PTP; SHP-1; VCAM-1
Indexed keywords
EMTREE drug terms: CD94 antigen; chromium 51; vascular cell adhesion molecule 1
EMTREE medical terms: animal cell; animal experiment; article; cell activation; controlled study; DNA microarray; electroacupuncture; gene expression; gene function; gene identification; genetic screening; high throughput screening; male; natural killer cell; nonhuman; priority journal; protein binding; rat; reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction; spleen; upregulation
MeSH: Acupuncture Points; Animals; Blotting, Northern; Blotting, Western; Chromium Isotopes; Cullin Proteins; Electroacupuncture; Integrin alpha1; Killer Cells, Natural; Male; Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; Rats; Rats, Sprague-Dawley; Receptor Protein-Tyrosine Kinases; Receptors, Vasopressin; Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; RNA, Messenger; Statistics, Nonparametric; Up-Regulation
Medline is the source for the MeSH terms of this document.
Chemicals and CAS Registry Numbers: chromium 51, 14392-02-0;Chromium Isotopes; Cul5 protein, rat; Cullin Proteins; Integrin alpha1; Receptor Protein-Tyrosine Kinases, EC 2.7.1.112; Receptors, Vasopressin; RNA, Messenger
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