In 1960 Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet received the Noble Prize in Physiology and Medicine. He titled his Nobel Lecture “Immunological Recognition of Self” emphasizing the central argument of immunological tolerance in “How does the vertebrate organism recognize self from nonself in this the immunological sense—and how did the capacity evolve.” The concept of self is linked to the concept of biological self identity. All organisms, from bacteria to higher animals, possess recognition systems to defend themselves from nonself. Even in the context of the limited number of metazoan phyla that have been studied in detail, we can now describe many of the alternative mechanism of immune recognition that have emerged at varying points in phylogeny. Two different arms—the innate and adaptive immune system—have emerged at different moments in evolution, and they are conceptually different. The ultimate goals of immune biology include reconstructing the molecular networks underlying immune processes.
Author(s): Jesús Martínez-Borra, Segundo González, Carlos López-Larrea (auth.), Carlos López-Larrea PhD (eds.)
Series: Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology 738
Edition: 1
Publisher: Springer-Verlag New York
Year: 2012
Language: English
Pages: 318
Tags: Immunology; Biomedicine general
Front Matter....Pages i-xxi
The Origin of the Bacterial Immune Response....Pages 1-13
The Evolution of Self During the Transition to Multicellularity....Pages 14-30
Glyconectin Glycans as the Self-Assembling Nano-Molecular-Velcrosystem Mediating Self-Nonself Recognition and Adhesion Implicated in Evolution of Multicellularity....Pages 31-45
Neglected Biological Features in Cnidarians Self-Nonself Recognition....Pages 46-59
Intracellular Inflammatory Sensors for Foreign Invaders and Substances of Self-Origin....Pages 60-78
Nonself Perception in Plant Innate Immunity....Pages 79-107
How did Flowering Plants Learn to Avoid Blind Date Mistakes?....Pages 108-123
Signaling Pathways that Regulate Life and Cell Death: Evolution of Apoptosis in the Context of Self-Defense....Pages 124-143
Sensing Necrotic Cells....Pages 144-152
Sensing Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress....Pages 153-168
Autophagy and Self-Defense....Pages 169-184
Viruses and Host Evolution: Virus-Mediated Self Identity....Pages 185-217
The Evolution of Adaptive Immunity....Pages 218-235
Epigenetic Code and Self-Identity....Pages 236-255
Viral Immunomodulatory Proteins: Usurping Host Genes as a Survival Strategy....Pages 256-276
The Emergence of the Major Histocompatilibility Complex....Pages 277-289
MHC Signaling during Social Communication....Pages 290-313
Back Matter....Pages 315-320
