| Autoantibodies directed against self-antigens are characteristic features of a number of human diseases. In systemic rheumatic diseases, these include antibodies that react with extracellular molecules; the cell membrane; nuclear and cytoplasmic components. Our laboratories have been interested in understanding autoimmune responses in systemic lupus erythematosus and related disease states and using human autoantibody as molecular probes in studying the cell biology of target antigens. This review summarizes our research efforts in dissecting the autoimmune response to the Golgi complex via expression cloning using human autoantibodies. We have cloned 4 of 5 known Golgi autoantigens that are referred to as golgin-95/GM130, golgin-97, golgin-160/GCP170, and... |
