Resolving to the use mercenaries by a General to help heighten his defensive line, while fighting an opposition is a very good strategy for winning battles. Complement proteins are mercenaries produced regularly by the liver cells and employed in fighting infections in the body.
The complement system is a set of nine major proteins (C1, C2, C3, C4, C5, C6, C7, C8 and C9).
These proteins migrate and mix with the blood, lymph and extracellular fluid where they help fight and destroy pathogens.
Complement proteins are enzymatic in nature and circulate in the body in inactive form.
They are either activated upon encounter with infections (or pathogens) in the body or by antigen-antibody complex.
These proteins are activated in three pathways:
The Classical Pathway
The Lectin Pathway
The Alternative Pathway
Classical Pathway
The binding of antibodies (IgG or IgM) to the antigens which are mainly bacteria (antigen-antibody complex) trigger the activation of complement proteins, mainly: C1 and C4 and subsequently lead to the activation of other complement proteins in a cascade reaction.
Alternative Pathway
In contrast to the classical pathway, the alternative pathway involves the B, D, H and I factors that interacts with each other and with C3b to form C3b convertase (C3bBb) which subsequently actives other C3 in a cascade reaction.
Lectin Pathway
This pathway is independent of antibodies involved in the classical pathway and factors of the alternative pathway. Activations of complement proteins in this pathway require the binding of Mannan-Binding Lectins (MBL) to mannose (sugar) on the surfaces of microorganisms. Lectin subsequently leads to a cascade reaction of the classical pathway.
The activation of these proteins leads to 3 major consequences:
Opsonization and Phagocytosis
Inflammation
Cytolysis (Membrane attack)
Opsonization and Phagocytosis
The complement proteins (C3b) bind to the antigens and present it to phagocytes which engulfs and digest them.
Inflammation
C5a and C5a are known to induce swelling of tissues at the site of infection and attract macrophages and neutrophils that does engulf, eat up and eliminate the antigens.
Cytolysis
This is also known as the lysis of target cells. Complement proteins such as C5b, C6, C7 and C8 and C9 assembles at the membrane of cells to form “Membrane-attack complex (MAC)” which creates pores on the membrane of target cells and subsequently leading to their disruption.
Nomenclature of the complement system
Complement proteins are usually designated by capital letter “C” followed by a number based on their order of discovery from C1- C9 (i.e C1, C2, C3, C4, C4, C5, C6, C7, C8, C9).
When a protein is broken into two, the resulting fragment is designated by adding a lower case suffix i.e “a” or “b”.
Where suffix “a” represent the smaller fragment
Suffix “b” represents the larger fragment
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