Cytokines
Cytokines are secreted proteins that many cell types produce; they are critical to both innate immunity and adaptive immune system responses. Cytokines are also implicated in immunological, inflammatory, and infectious disease, and in developmental processes during human embryogenesis.
Cytokines are specific to certain cell-surface receptors, and initiate a signalling sequence that cascades through the cell to alter cell function, including upregulation and downregulation of several genes and transcription factors that produce other cytokines, increase surface receptors for other molecules, or suppress cytokine effect. Cytokines may share similar functions, and act on many different cell types.
It is hard to generalize cytokine functions, but they may be grouped roughly as:
- Autocrine, if the cytokine acts on its own secretory cell
- Paracrine, if the cytokine acts only in its own vicinity
- Endocrine, if the cytokine diffuses to other parts of the body to affect distant tissues.
Cytokines have also been termed interleukins and chemokines. One of the cytokine subfamilies includes the interferons as well.They have effects in immunoglobulins, the haemopoietic growth factor, and the tumor necrosis factor. Improper cytokine function can also lead to septicemia.
Web Resources On Cytokines
Properties of Cytokines
The Cytokines Web
Book Resources On CytokinesThe Cytokine Handbook by Thomson & Lotze
Cytokines and Adhesion Molecules in Lung Inflammation by Michel Chignard et al
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