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Immunology

Actin' dangerously

Nature volume 485, pages 589–590 (2012)Cite this article

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Recognition of aberrant cell death is a crucial function of the immune system. It seems that one way in which immune cells identify damage is by sensing actin, an abundant intracellular protein.

The immune system evolved to detect not only invading microorganisms but also non-infectious damage or alterations in the body's cells, and to mobilize reparative as well as defensive responses1. Aberrant-cell death is one form of injury that is recognized as 'dangerous' by the immune system2, but how this death is sensed, and how it activates subsequent immune responses, is incompletely understood. Writing in Immunity, Ahrens et al.3 and Zhang et al.4 provide a key piece of this puzzle by demonstrating that the immune system can detect actin, a major protein component of the cytoskeleton, the cellular scaffold.

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Figure 1: DNGR-1 recognition of filamentous actin triggers cross-presentation.

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  1. Gordon D. Brown is at the Institute of Medical Sciences, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB25 2ZD, UK.,

    Gordon D. Brown

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  1. Gordon D. Brown
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Correspondence to Gordon D. Brown.

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Brown, G. Actin' dangerously. Nature 485, 589–590 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/485589a

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