Cantera Rafael, Barrio Rosa
Zoology Department, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.
J Innate Immun. 2015;7(1):3-10. doi: 10.1159/000365195. Epub 2014 Aug 9.
A profound debate exists on the relationship between neurodegeneration and the innate immune response in humans. Although it is clear that such a relation exists, the causes and consequences of this complex association remain to be determined in detail. Drosophila is being used to investigate the mechanisms involved in neurodegeneration, and all genomic studies on this issue have generated gene catalogues enriched in genes of the innate immune response. We review the data reported in these publications and propose that the abundance of immune genes in studies of neurodegeneration reflects at least two phenomena: (i) some proteins have functions in both immune and nervous systems, and (ii) immune genes might also be of neuroprotective value in Drosophila. This review opens this debate in Drosophila, which could thus be used as an instrumental model to elucidate this question.
关于神经退行性变与人类先天性免疫反应之间的关系,存在着一场深刻的争论。尽管这种关系显然存在,但这种复杂关联的原因和后果仍有待详细确定。果蝇正被用于研究神经退行性变所涉及的机制,并且关于这个问题的所有基因组研究都生成了富含先天性免疫反应基因的基因目录。我们回顾了这些出版物中报道的数据,并提出神经退行性变研究中免疫基因的丰富性至少反映了两种现象:(i)一些蛋白质在免疫和神经系统中都具有功能,以及(ii)免疫基因在果蝇中可能也具有神经保护价值。这篇综述开启了果蝇领域的这场争论,因此果蝇可作为一个有用的模型来阐明这个问题。