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This Comment outlines how the recently licensed vaccines for COVID-19 activate innate immune mechanisms to promote immune memory to SARS-CoV-2. The authors also consider future challenges that could limit vaccine efficacy.
Preliminary data from Israel demonstrate real-life effectiveness of their COVID-19 vaccination campaign and provide insights that could inform rollout in other countries.
Reassuring data from accidental pregnancies that have occurred in the clinical trials of approved COVID-19 vaccines indicate that vaccination does not harm fertility or increase the rate of miscarriage.
Somewhat surprisingly, individuals with asthma do not seem to have a greater risk of developing severe COVID-19. Here, the authors offer mechanistic insights to explain the epidemiological data.
A recent study in Immunity explains the loss of T cells and consequent increased susceptibility to bacterial infection following severe tissue injury. Injury-induced AIM2 inflammasome activation causes expansion of a CD95L-expressing monocyte population, which leads to extrinsic T cell apoptosis.
A preprint by Sugiura et al. looks at the role of one-carbon metabolism during T cell activation, with a focus on autoimmune disease, and identifies differences between T cell subsets.
A recent study in Science describes how the innate immune sensor cGAS is inhibited by phosphorylation during mitosis to prevent an inflammatory response to self-DNA.
Intestinal helminths can increase the lethality of a subsequent coinfection with neurotropic flaviviruses by activating tuft cells and type 2 immune mechanisms in the gut.
A preprint by Lim et al. looks at the effects of maternal infection on long-term immunity in offspring, showing that maternal IL-6-induced signalling in mice induces epigenetic changes in fetal intestinal epithelial cells.
Memory B cells are critically important for the formation of protective immunity following infection or vaccination, and a better understanding of these cells may inform strategies to overcome hurdles in the development of effective vaccines. This Review discusses the signals and transcription factors that regulate the development and function of germinal centre-derived memory B cells.
This Review focuses on the roles of γδ T cells in tissue homeostasis and immune surveillance. The authors discuss exciting new studies showing how γδ T cells can regulate diverse physiological responses in tissues, ranging from thermogenesis in adipose tissue to remodelling at neuronal synapses.
Glucocorticoid treatment is used to suppress the immune system in various disease settings. However, endogenous glucocorticoids are able to promote as well as inhibit different aspects of T cell immunity. Here, the authors discuss the many ways in which T cell responses are shaped by glucocorticoids.
A timeline of the major scientific discoveries during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic showcases the collaborative efforts that enabled the key aspects of the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 to be reported at unprecedented speed.
A number of T cell-intrinsic peripheral tolerance mechanisms (quiescence, ignorance, anergy, exhaustion, senescence and cell death) restrain autoimmunity and overactive immune responses. Here, the authors provide an integrated perspective of peripheral T cell tolerance by comparing the molecular mechanisms that govern these checkpoints and discussing their role in T cell tolerance and fate regulation.
