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Nature Immunology 9, 1097–1099 (1 October 2008) | doi:10.1038/ni1008-1097

RAPping production of type I interferon in pDCs through mTOR

Mauro Costa-Mattioli & Nahum Sonenberg

The main producers of systemic type I interferon are plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs). Unlike mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) and conventional DCs, which recognize viral nucleic acids through the cytoplasmic receptors RIG-I and Mda5, pDCs recognize viruses by means of two members of the Toll-like receptor (TLR) family, TLR7 and TLR9, expressed in endosomes.