Year: 2011
Type: article
Abstract: Throughout evolutionary history, animals have faced attack by fellow metazoans, often resulting in damage to tissues. This can take the form of a worm migrating to find its reproductive niche or eating host tissue for food, or even the bite of an insect. A proinflammatory oxidative-type of immunological attack, typically utilized against intracellular microbes, can in some cases kill these multicellular parasites [1], but because worms and insects cannot be contained within a single cell, the collateral tissue damage that will result from such an attack could seriously compromise host fitness. During the course of evolution, the most cost-effective approach to deal with very large foreign invaders may have been to tolerate them and quickly repair any tissue damage that compromised fitness [2,3]. In this scenario, Th1 immunity characterized by IFN-c production evolved to control our innate anti-microbial pathways, while the host defense system that
Source: PLoS Pathogens
Authors: Judith E. Allen, Thomas A. Wynn
Language: English
Topic: T-cell and B-cell Immunology
Subfield: Immunology
Field: Immunology and Microbiology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,043
OpenAlex ID: W2147307935