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  • Year in Review
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INNATE IMMUNITY AND INFLAMMATION IN 2018

The signposts and winding roads to immunity and inflammation

Nature Reviews Immunology volume 19, pages 81–82 (2019)Cite this article

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The field of innate immunity has been rapidly evolving and expanding its horizons during the past few years. 2018 was no exception, with the publication of several ground-breaking studies that bring into light new activators, regulators and signalling networks that drive innate immune responses and inflammation.

Key advances

  • ALPK1 acts as an innate immune sensor of ADP-heptose, an intermediary metabolite in the biosynthetic pathway of LPS.

  • IRF8 regulates expression of NAIPs and promotes NLRC4 inflammasome activation.

  • NLRP6 binds to lipoteichoic acid from Gram-positive bacteria and assembles an inflammasome.

  • TAK1 inhibition of RIPK1 restricts spontaneous activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome, caspase 8 and gasdermin D-dependent pyroptosis and age-associated neuroinflammation in distinct scenarios.

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Fig. 1: Diverse innate immune sensing pathways interconnect and trigger inflammation.

References

  1. Zhou, P. et al. Alpha-kinase 1 is a cytosolic innate immune receptor for bacterial ADP-heptose. Nature 561, 122–126 (2018).

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Acknowledgements

The author thanks T. Kuriakose for editing the manuscript and M. Zheng for help with the figure.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Immunology, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN, USA

    Thirumala-Devi Kanneganti

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  1. Thirumala-Devi Kanneganti
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Correspondence to Thirumala-Devi Kanneganti.

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The author declares no competing interests.

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Kanneganti, TD. The signposts and winding roads to immunity and inflammation. Nat Rev Immunol 19, 81–82 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41577-018-0108-1

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