Research report 2004 - Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics

Quality control in the immune system

Authors
Boehm, Thomas
Departments

Entwicklung des Immunsystems (Prof. Dr. Thomas Boehm)
MPI für Immunbiologie, Freiburg

Summary
How does the immune system avoid self-destruction and the devastating effects of autoimmunity that Paul Ehrlich described as “horror autotoxicus“? How did early vertebrates survive when they began to use receptors with random antigen specificities despite their extensive self-reactivity? It appears that the quality control mechanisms taming self-reactivity in the immune system were derived from an ancient mechanism that guided sexualselection on the basis of evaluating genetic diversity.

For the full text, see the German version.

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