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The appearance of innate lymphoid cells was a major step in the evolution of vertebrate immunity. In their Perspective, Vivier et al. survey these cells in evolution and their functional inter-relationship with conventional T cells and B cells.
The redundant or specialized roles of innate lymphoid cells (ILCs) relative to those of T cells in vivo remain hard to delineate experimentally. Bando and Colonna review the current understanding of the specialized in vivo functions of ILCs and discuss the genetic mouse models used to assess the contributions of ILCs versus those of T cells.
Bedoui and colleagues discuss the naive state of conventional T cells as an actively repressed condition that supports T cell diversity and enables the flexible differentiation of effectors, and also offers a relevant discrimination criterion between innate and adaptive lymphocytes.
In this Perspective, MacMicking and colleagues discuss the roles of interferon-induced guanylate-binding proteins in directing inflammasome responses and their effects on immunity to a wide variety of microbial pathogens.
In this Perspective, Chang and Pearce discuss recent progress in understanding how metabolic pathways control T cell function and how these pathways can be manipulated for therapeutic purposes.
Murray reviews how immune cells integrate information about external essential amino acids supplies and transfer signals to growth and activation pathways that dictate cell function.
