Spear Abigail M, Loman Nicholas J, Atkins Helen S, Pallen Mark J
Defence, Science and Technology Laboratory, Porton Down, Salisbury, Wiltshire SP4 0JQ, UK.
Trends Microbiol. 2009 Sep;17(9):393-8. doi: 10.1016/j.tim.2009.06.005. Epub 2009 Aug 28.
The Toll/interleukin-1 receptor (TIR) domain plays a crucial role in the mammalian innate immune response. Recently, proteins containing TIR domains have been described in bacteria and it has been suggested that these bacterial proteins are involved in subversion of the vertebrate immune system. Here we describe the distribution of TIR-domain proteins among bacteria, fungi, archaea and viruses and evaluate the subversion hypothesis in the light of our findings. We suggest that most TIR domains in bacteria have nothing to do with subverting eukaryotic cells; instead, TIR domains function simply as general purpose protein-protein interaction domains put to diverse uses.
Toll样受体/白细胞介素-1受体（TIR）结构域在哺乳动物固有免疫应答中起关键作用。最近，在细菌中发现了含有TIR结构域的蛋白质，有人认为这些细菌蛋白参与了对脊椎动物免疫系统的破坏。在此，我们描述了TIR结构域蛋白在细菌、真菌、古菌和病毒中的分布情况，并根据我们的发现对破坏假说进行评估。我们认为，细菌中的大多数TIR结构域与破坏真核细胞无关；相反，TIR结构域仅作为通用的蛋白质-蛋白质相互作用结构域发挥作用，用途多样。
