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Strategies to discover regulatory circuits of the mammalian immune system

Nature Reviews Immunology volume 11, pages 873–880 (2011)Cite this article

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Abstract

Recent advances in technologies for genome- and proteome-scale measurements and perturbations promise to accelerate discovery in every aspect of biology and medicine. Although such rapid technological progress provides a tremendous opportunity, it also demands that we learn how to use these tools effectively. One application with great potential to enhance our understanding of biological systems is the unbiased reconstruction of genetic and molecular networks. Cells of the immune system provide a particularly useful model for developing and applying such approaches. Here, we review approaches for the reconstruction of signalling and transcriptional networks, with a focus on applications in the mammalian innate immune system.

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Figure 1: Immune cell activation, cell states and network reconstruction.
Figure 2: An overview of the proposed network reconstruction strategy.
Figure 3: Future clinical applications.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the US National Institutes of Health, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Human Frontier Science Program and the Broad Institute for funding the work presented here.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ido Amit, Aviv Regev and Nir Hacohen are at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, 7 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142, USA.,

    Ido Amit, Aviv Regev & Nir Hacohen

  2. Department of Immunology, Ido Amit is also at the Weizmann Institute, Rehovot 76100, Israel. ido.amit@weizmann.ac.il,

    Ido Amit

  3. Department of Biology, Aviv Regev is also at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142, USA. aregev@broadinstitute.org,

    Aviv Regev

  4. and the Department of Medicine, Nir Hacohen is also at the Center for Immunology and Inflammatory Diseases, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, Massachusetts 02129, USA, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA. nhacohen@partners.org,

    Nir Hacohen

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Amit, I., Regev, A. & Hacohen, N. Strategies to discover regulatory circuits of the mammalian immune system. Nat Rev Immunol 11, 873–880 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nri3109

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