Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
The need to translate basic research in the field of human immunology may be much more urgent, and the rewards potentially much greater, than is often acknowledged. Yet a commonly perceived coercion to undertake translational research may be unhelpful. Instead, we propose clear incentives for integrating key skill sets, together with achievable cultural adjustments in research and medicine that span training, recruitment and promotion.
Over the past decade immunological research in China has developed rapidly. This commentary describes the history, summarizes the present research funding system, institutions and representative work, and discusses the future of immunological research in China.
The American Association of Immunologists sponsors summer fellowships for high school and middle school teachers in the laboratories of its members. New curricula developed through the program are expected to enhance secondary school science education throughout the United States.
Mentoring and networking are critical components for success in science. Here the importance and steps required for good mentoring and networking are described.
We will never have a better opportunity to improve public health globally. The question is whether we are shrewd enough, bold enough, and committed enough to make it happen.
As part of the Global Theme Issue on Poverty and Human Development, Frances Gotch and Jill Gilmour describe the development of laboratory capacity to support HIV vaccine trials as a model for technology transfer in the developing world.
Relatively few studies have used live tissue microscopy to evaluate how the immune system responds to pathogens. In this commentary we discuss the challenges of imaging infectious processes and the questions that can be addressed with these dynamic approaches.
Modern cellular and molecular studies have made great progress in characterizing the mechanisms that control immune responses. Now it is time to broaden the present views to accommodate evidence from epitope-specific and other immunoregulatory systems, which were well studied some years ago and are still highly relevant to contemporary work.
Mutations have been the driving force behind some of the most important discoveries in immunology, and the growing speed with which they can be found has impelled the use of random mutagenesis to create new immunological phenotypes in mice. Here we describe how phenotypes are created, detected and ascribed to genetic change.
Conditional gene targeting based on excision or inversion of loxP-flanked DNA segments by Cre recombinase is a powerful technology for the analysis of gene function, but unexpected expression patterns of cre transgenes, variability of recombination efficiency depending on the target gene and potential toxicity of Cre recombinase represent serious challenges for the experimenter.
There is general appreciation that 'genetic background effects' can profoundly affect the immune phenotypes of congenic, transgenic and knockout mice. We suggest that attributing phenotypes to genetic background effects is outmoded and that new databases containing single-nucleotide polymorphisms obtained with a group of inbred mouse strains can be used to define the flanking DNA of nearly all mouse genes.
Investigations of immune recognition in nonmammalian species provide new insights into the evolution of immunity and the inner workings of the mammalian immune system. Very diverse mechanisms are used by different multicellular organisms to recognize and cope with the rapidly evolving microbial world.
Maternal-infant transmission provides a useful model for the study of immune factors associated with protection against the acquisition of human immunodeficiency virus and has emphasized the importance of CCL3 in protective immunity to this virus.
There have been enormous advances in the field of immunology over the past 3 decades, and those advances have had a positive effect on many subspecialties of medicine. Opportunities for even more notable advances remain. However, present and projected budget constraints for the National Institutes of Health have created formidable challenges. This commentary addresses the opportunities and challenges for the field of immunology during a period of restricted budgets.
