Department of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences, Center for Molecular Immunology and Infectious Disease, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.
mBio. 2013 Mar 26;4(2):e00027-13. doi: 10.1128/mBio.00027-13.
Immunology has been studied and understood in the context of the compelling problems of infectious disease. But our rapidly growing knowledge of immune interactions with our healthy microbiota, and the many benefits it confers, suggests there may be value to an alternative view: that mechanisms of defense against pathogens are one aspect of a complex system with the broader purpose of managing our healthy microbiome. From this perspective, adaptive immunity may be viewed as a flexible system for simultaneously recruiting and managing a near limitless number of potential symbionts. This perspective can allow for reinterpretation of many observations and can suggest new experiments to help us better understand our complex interactions with the microbes that surround us.
免疫学是在研究和理解传染病这一紧迫问题的背景下进行的。但是，我们对免疫与健康微生物组相互作用及其带来的诸多益处的认识迅速增加，这表明可能需要另一种观点：即抵御病原体的机制是一个复杂系统的一个方面，其更广泛的目的是管理我们健康的微生物组。从这个角度来看，适应性免疫可以被视为一个灵活的系统，用于同时招募和管理近乎无限数量的潜在共生体。这种观点可以重新解释许多观察结果，并提出新的实验来帮助我们更好地理解我们与周围微生物的复杂相互作用。
