UCLA scientists decode the 'language' of immune cells

(University of California - Los Angeles) UCLA scientists have identified 'words' immune cells use to call up immune defense genes -- an important step toward understanding their language. The scientists also discovered that in an autoimmune disease, Sj ö gren's syndrome, two of these words are used incorrectly, activating the wrong genes and triggering the disease. Senior author, UCLA Professor Alexander Hoffmann, compares decoding the language of immune cells to when archaeologists discovered the Rosetta stone and could begin to read Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Source: EurekAlert! - Infectious and Emerging Diseases - Category: Infectious Diseases Source Type: news