New paper in FASEB

Recently Lennart Pfannkuch from the department of Molecular Biology gave a talk in the „Wissenschaft für alle“ series of the MPIIB about pattern recognition during infections. The paper on this work is now out. It describes a novel pathogen-associated molecule, ADP-heptose, which is recognized by host cells to alert them to the presence of a pathogen. This sugar is an intermediate in the synthesis of lipopolysaccharide, the major outer membrane component of gram-negative bacteria. Together with Robert Hurwitz from the protein purification core facility, the team was able to show that ADP-heptose is present in extracts of the gastric bacterium Helicobacter pylori and that it is the only molecule in the bacteria responsible for stimulating an inflammatory response via the extremely rapid ALPK1-TIFA-NF-κB pathway they discovered in 2017.

Lennart Pfannkuch, Robert Hurwitz, Jan Traulsen, Janine Sigulla, Marcella Poeschke, Laura Matzner, Paul Kosma, Monika Schmid and Thomas F. Meyer (2019) ADP-heptose, a novel pathogen-associated molecular pattern identified in Helicobacter pylori. FASEB
https://doi.org/10.1096/fj.201802555R