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Tissue biology perspective on macrophages

Nature Immunology volume 17, pages 9–17 (2016)Cite this article

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Abstract

Macrophages are essential components of mammalian tissues. Although historically known mainly for their function in host defense and the clearance of apoptotic cells, macrophages are now increasingly recognized as serving many roles in tissue development, homeostasis and repair. In addition, tissue-resident macrophages have many tissue-specific functional characteristics, which are a reflection of distinct gene-expression programs. Here we discuss the emerging views of macrophage biology from evolutionary, developmental and homeostatic perspectives.

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Figure 1: The concept of primary and accessory cell types.
Figure 2: Two types of signals that define the functional states of a cell.
Figure 3: Macrophage phenotype is a product of differentiation and polarization.
Figure 4: Transcriptional modules that control macrophage phenotypes.
Figure 5: The macrophage as a homeostatic controller.

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Acknowledgements

We thank members of the Medzhitov laboratory for discussions, and L. Kopp for reading the manuscript. Supported by The Blavatnik Family Foundation, Else Kröner-Fresenius-Stiftung, the US National Institutes of Health (AI046688, AI089771 and CA157461) and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (all for research in the Medzhitov laboratory).

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  1. Department of Immunobiology, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, USA

    Yasutaka Okabe & Ruslan Medzhitov

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Correspondence to Ruslan Medzhitov.

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Okabe, Y., Medzhitov, R. Tissue biology perspective on macrophages. Nat Immunol 17, 9–17 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ni.3320

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