Abstract
β-Glucans are a heterogeneous group of glucose polymers with a common structure comprising a main chain of β-(1,3) and/or β-(1,4)-glucopyranosyl units, along with side chains with various branches and lengths. β-Glucans initiate immune responses via immune cells, which become activated by the binding of the polymer to specific receptors. However, β-glucans from different sources also differ in their structure, conformation, physical properties, binding affinity to receptors, and thus biological functions. The mechanisms behind this are not fully understood. This mini-review provides a comprehensive and up-to-date commentary on the relationship between β-glucans' structure and function in relation to their use for immunomodulation.
Highlights
Specialty section: This article was submitted to Nutritional Immunology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Immunology
When discussing the immune-modulator functions of glucans, here we mostly considered β-1,3-glucan purified from fungal cell walls
Research demonstrated that neutrophil modulation by β-glucan is predominantly complement receptor 3 (CR3) dependent while Dectin1 is the most important β-glucan receptor on macrophages [13,14,15]
Summary
Specialty section: This article was submitted to Nutritional Immunology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Immunology. Β-Glucans initiate immune responses via immune cells, which become activated by the binding of the polymer to specific receptors. Β-glucans from different sources differ in their structure, conformation, physical properties, binding affinity to receptors, and biological functions.
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