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Innate immune pattern recognition receptors play critical roles in pathogen detection and initiation of antimicrobial responses. We and others have previously demonstrated the importance of the beta-glucan receptor Dectin-1 in the recognition of pathogenic fungi by macrophages and dendritic cells and have elucidated some of the mechanisms by which Dectin-1 signals to coordinate the antifungal response. While Dectin-1 signals alone are sufficient to trigger phagocytosis and Src-Syk-mediated induction of antimicrobial reactive oxygen species, collaboration with TLR2 signaling enhances NF-kappaB activation and regulates cytokine production. In this study we demonstrate that Dectin-1 signaling can also directly modulate gene expression via activation of NFAT. Dectin-1 ligation by zymosan particles or live Candida albicans yeast triggers NFAT activation in macrophages and dendritic cells. Dectin-1-triggered NFAT activation plays a role in the induction of early growth response 2 and early growth response 3 transcription factors, and cyclooxygenase-2. Furthermore, we show that NFAT activation regulates IL-2, IL-10 and IL-12 p70 production by zymosan-stimulated dendritic cells. These data establish NFAT activation in myeloid cells as a novel mechanism of regulation of the innate antimicrobial response.
Goodridge et al. (Thu,) studied this question.