β-Catenin Balances Immunity

Dendritic cells can limit responses to self antigens by activating the Wnt signaling pathway. The human immune system ensures protective responses against pathogen-associated antigens while ignoring the individual's own proteins, carbohydrates, nucleic acids, and lipids. This balance of toleran...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inScience (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Vol. 329; no. 5993; pp. 767 - 769
Main Authors Mellman, Ira, Clausen, Björn E.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published American Association for the Advancement of Science 13.08.2010
Subjects
Antigens
Cadherins
Cytokines
Exercise tolerance
Immune tolerance
Immunity
Infections
PERSPECTIVES
Self tolerance
T lymphocytes
Transplantation tolerance
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:Dendritic cells can limit responses to self antigens by activating the Wnt signaling pathway. The human immune system ensures protective responses against pathogen-associated antigens while ignoring the individual's own proteins, carbohydrates, nucleic acids, and lipids. This balance of tolerance to “self ” against immunity to “non-self ” is crucial because its failure can lead to autoimmune and inflammatory disorders when tolerance is insufficient, or to unresolved chronic infections and possibly cancer when tolerance is too robust. On page 849 in this issue, Manicassamy et al. ( 1 ) demonstrate that β-catenin signaling, well known for its role in development, is key to balancing tolerance and immunity through the control of dendritic cell (DC) function.
ISSN:0036-8075
1095-9203
DOI:10.1126/science.1194185