Volume 11 Issue 7, July 2010

The next decade will probably witness the development of new concepts that will incorporate the presently unexplained aspects of innate immunity.

The imaging of tissues and organs as it is now practiced will seem primitive in the coming decade, yet use of this technology will define the origin of emergent activities and drive an era of system integration.

Over the next 10 years, it will be important to shift the focus of mucosal immunology research to make further advances. Examination of the mucosal immune system as a global organ, rather than as a group of individual components, will identify and characterize relationships between mucosal sites.

Acetylcholine and related neurotransmitters appeared with unicellular life forms, millions of years before innate immunity. Tools and insights are now available for understanding how the evolving nervous system influenced the development of immunity.

Epigenetics studies the phenotypes that are born from past experiences and are kept for life.

Hematopoietic lineage schemes commonly show two distinct lymphoid and myeloid branches arising from the hematopoietic stem cell early during blood cell development. A new study of human hematopoiesis demonstrates that, similar to findings in mice, this split is not as dichotomous as is often presented.

CD8⁺ T cells expressing two distinct T cell antigen receptors fail to be tolerized and can induce autoimmunity.

Lineage specification and development require a hierarchy of transcription factors. A genome-wide view of transcription factor binding provides new insights into early B lineage development.

The classical model of hematopoiesis proposes an early split of the lymphoid and myeloid lineages. Dick and co-workers show that as in the mouse, human hematopoiesis does not follow a rigid model of myeloid-lymphoid segregation.

Tissue-resident leukocytes migrate to draining lymph nodes after being activated. Kumanogoh and colleagues show that such entry requires semaphorin 3A, produced by lymphatic vessels, to activate plexin-A1 receptors on migrating dendritic cells.

Immunoglobulin E–mediated crosslinking of FɛRI receptors can lead to life-threatening anaphylaxis in sensitized people. Shibuya and colleagues identify a phosphatase-recruiting inhibitory receptor, Allergin-1, that suppresses mast cell degranulation induced by immunoglobulin E–FɛRI.

The mechanisms that initiate T helper type 2 responses are poorly understood. Pulendran and colleagues now show that such responses to cysteine proteases require dendritic cell–basophil cooperation via signaling mediated by reactive oxygen species.

Expression of the transcription factor Foxp3 is a hallmark of regulatory T cells. Li and co-workers find that Foxo1 and Foxo3 control thymic and TGF-β-induced Foxp3 expression.

Whether environmental antigens can elicit autoimmunity remains unclear. Goverman and colleagues show that viral infection breaks self-tolerance via activation of CD8⁺ T cells expressing dual T cell antigen receptors, without bystander activation or molecular mimicry.

Lineage specification and development require a hierarchy of transcription factors. Murre and colleagues have compiled a genome-wide set of cis-acting targets centered on E2A, EBF1 and Foxo1 that govern early B cell development.

Nature Immunologywas launched 10 years ago in July 2000. To commemorate this anniversary we asked several prominent scientists to imagine what the next decade of research might bring in particular areas of immunology.