UCLA scientists decode the ‘language’ of immune cells

UCLA life scientists have identified six “words” that specific immune cells use to call up immune defense genes — an important step toward understanding the language the body uses to marshal responses to threats.In addition, they discovered that the incorrect use of two of these words can activate the wrong genes, resulting in the autoimmune disease known as Sj ögren’s syndrome. The research, conducted in mice,is published this week in the peer-reviewed journal Immunity (Cell Press).“Cells have evolved an immune response code, or language,” said senior author Alexander Hoffmann, the Thomas M. Asher Professor of Microbiology and director of the Institute for Quantitative and Computational Biosciencesat UCLA. “We have identified some words in that language, and we know these words are important because of what happens when they are misused. Now we need to understand the meaning of the words, and we are making rapid progress. It’s as exciting as when archaeologists discovered the Rosetta stone and cou ld begin to read Egyptian hieroglyphs.”Immune cells in the body constantly assess their environment and coordinate their defense functions by using words— or signaling codons, in scientific parlance— to tell the cell ’s nucleus which genes to turn on in response to invaders like pathogenic bacteria and viruses.Each signaling codon consists of several successive actions of a DNA binding protein that, when combined, elicit the proper gene activation, in muc...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news