Web Focus: 50th Anniversary of Clonal Selection Theory

It is just over fifty years since the publication of the concept of clonal selection in the Australian Journal of Science by Nobel Laureate, Sir Macfarlane Burnet. It is no exaggeration to suggest that these two pages, written over a weekend, and published in an obscure journal, changed immunology forever. The incredible impact of this paper on international science is worth celebrating as an exemplar of the immense power of one idea to change our world.

To mark this auspicious anniversary Immunology and Cell Biology is publishing a Special Feature across two issues highlighting the achievement and its subsequent repercussions. To accompany these new articles we have gathered together a Web Focus that includes commemorative articles recently published in Nature Immunology and Nature Reviews Immunology; older historical discussions as well key papers from the Nature Publishing Group archive that illustrate the validation of the theory and its impact upon the field of immunology.