Lecture 15: Microbial Infections

Understand how microbes use various portals of entry (focus on respiratory and intestinal)

Understand what virulence factors do;

• Colonize;

  • Adhesins; target substances, cells, and/or tissues

• Invade;

  • Invasins; target substances, cells, and/or tissues

• Evade;

  • Enzymes, toxic molecules; barrier systens abd defense mechanisms

• Suppress;

  • enzymes, toxic molecules; innate & adaptive immune responses

• Acquire

  • Siderophores; nutrition from target substances, cells, and/or tissues

Crazy Infectious Enterics Sleep Around

Understand what virulence factors are

Molecules produced by microbes that enable them to replicate & cause disease.

• Virulence factors include glycoproteins, glycolipids, or other types of molecules that are present in the structure of microbes

• Some virulence factors are integral to the biologic structure of microbes; other factors are synthesized by microbes using the metabolic processes of the target cell as needed to replicate

Be able to describe the protective functions of mucus