Myristinin B/C

Infectious-disease experiments test how pathogens interact with host barriers, innate immune receptors, inflammatory signaling, pathogen replication, and tissue injury; pattern-recognition receptors such as TLRs, RIG-I-like receptors, NOD-like receptors, and inflammasomes detect microbial molecules and activate NF-κB, interferon, and cytokine responses. The central hypothesis is that infection severity reflects the balance between pathogen burden and host response: protective inflammation restricts pathogen growth, whereas excessive or mislocalized inflammation contributes to tissue damage and disease phenotype. Unresolved questions include which host pathways are protective versus pathogenic, why some infection models fail to translate to human disease, and which combined readouts best predict clinically relevant infection outcomes.

Collagen-induced arthritis (CIA) is an autoimmune murine model of rheumatoid arthritis in which immunization with type II collagen (CII) emulsified in an adjuvant induces a T cell- and autoantibody-driven inflammatory arthritis characterized by synovial hyperplasia, immune cell infiltration, and joint destruction. The model typically relies on genetically susceptible mouse strains (e. g. , DBA/1) and reproduces key features of human rheumatoid arthritis, including anti-collagen immune responses and progressive joint inflammation. Disease onset generally occurs within ~3-4 weeks after immunization, depending on antigen/adjuvant combinations and protocol variation. The immunopathology is driven by adaptive immune activation against CII, leading to systemic and local joint inflammation mediated by pro-inflammatory cytokines and effector immune cells, making CIA a standard preclinical platform for evaluating immunomodulatory and anti-arthritic interventions.

Cytotoxicity assays are usually based on the assessment of cell membrane damage, which can also be indirectly detected by measuring cell viability. Detection methods include MTT assay, CKK-8 assay, LDH assay and ATP assay, etc.

The NLRP3 inflammasome is a cytosolic innate immune signaling platform that integrates priming signals and danger-signal activation to promote caspase-1 activation, maturation of IL-1β and IL-18, and gasdermin D-mediated pyroptotic cell death. The core experimental logic is to determine whether inflammatory disease phenotypes are driven by increased NLRP3 expression, ASC-containing inflammasome assembly, caspase-1 cleavage, GSDMD cleavage, and extracellular release of IL-1β/IL-18 rather than by nonspecific cell injury alone. The pathway is strongly linked to inflammation-related disease phenotypes because monosodium urate crystals activate NALP3/NLRP3 inflammasome signaling in gout-like crystal inflammation, cholesterol crystals activate NLRP3 inflammasomes in atherogenesis models, and DSS-induced intestinal inflammation has been reported to involve NLRP3 inflammasome activity. However, experimental colitis studies also show context-dependent protective effects of NLRP3 inflammasome co