Highly diversified innate receptor systems and new forms of animal immunity.
Detailed understanding of animal immunity derives almost entirely from investigations of vertebrates, with a smaller, but significant, contribution from studies in fruit flies. This limited phylogenetic scope has artificially polarized the larger view of animal immunity toward the complex adaptive immune systems of vertebrates on the one hand and systems driven by relatively small, stable families of innate receptors of insects on the other. In the past few years analyses of a series of invertebrate deuterostome genome sequences, including those from echinoderms and cephalochordates, sharply modify this view. These findings have far-reaching implications for characterizing the potential range of animal immunity and for inferring the evolutionary pathway that led to vertebrate immune systems.
Messier-Solek
Cynthia
C
Department of Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, 2075 Bayview Avenue, Rm. S126B, Toronto, ON M4N 3M5, Canada. cmessier@sri.utoronto.ca
Buckley
Katherine M
KM
Rast
Jonathan P
JP
D056704:Adaptive Immunity; D000818:Animals; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D006801:Humans; D007113:Immunity, Innate; D010802:Phylogeny; D011971:Receptors, Immunologic / Q000276:immunology*
D011971:Receptors, Immunologic