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Volume 8 Issue 10, October 2007

50 years ago saw the publication of the clonal selection theory by Frank Macfarlane Burnet, pictured here. This month we celebrate this landmark in immunology with a special commentary by Hodgkin, Heath and Baxter, accompanied by the republication of Burnet's clonal selection theory. Original photograph courtesy of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute. Artwork by Lewis Long.

Volume 8 Issue 10

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Editorial

  • The year 2007 marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Burnet's clonal selection theory. This theory provided an intellectual framework that revolutionized the field of immunology.

    Editorial

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Obituary

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Essay

  • This year marks the 50th anniversary of Burnet's clonal selection theory. Here Gustav Nossal recounts his pioneering work that supported Burnet's theory and led to the death of the direct template hypothesis.

    • G J V Nossal
    Essay
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Historical Commentary

  • October 2007 marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Frank Macfarlane Burnet's clonal selection theory in the Australian Journal of Science. This short article, republished at the end of this commentary, revolutionized the field of immunology.

    • Philip D Hodgkin
    • William R Heath
    • Alan G Baxter

    Milestone:

    Historical Commentary
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News & Views

  • The survival of naive CD8+ T cells depends on the receipt of 'tonic' T cell receptor signals, but overt self-reactivity must be avoided. New work traces an intricate regulatory loop responsible for 'tuning' CD8 coreceptor expression to a 'balance point' appropriate for each T cell receptor.

    • Juan Carlos Zúñiga-Pflücker
    News & Views

  • Respiratory proteins of vertebrates (hemoglobin) and invertebrates (hemocyanin) can generate highly reactive oxygen intermediates. New work shows that microbial compounds directly activate this release of reactive oxygen intermediates that kills the microbes.

    • Christian Bogdan
    News & Views

  • Differential splicing generates thousands of isoforms of the arthropod cell surface receptor Dscam. A new study explains the ability of these receptors to simultaneously generate homophilic and heterophilic interaction surfaces.

    • Thomas Boehm
    News & Views

  • For both mice and humans, an invariant T cell receptor mediates the recognition of glycolipid antigens presented in the context of CD1d molecules. Crystal structure and mutagenesis-based analyses now identify a minimalist binding mode well suited to an 'innate-style' pattern-recognition function.

    • E Yvonne Jones
    • Mariolina Salio
    • Vincenzo Cerundolo
    News & Views

  • T cells interact with chemokines displayed on cells outside and inside blood vessels of the lymph node. New work shows that these chemokines exert distinct activation effects on T cell integrins depending on their mechanical environment.

    • Rodger P McEver
    • Cheng Zhu
    News & Views
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Review Article

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Article

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