Great Innate

Two prongs of your immune system tackle invaders with a precision pincer movement to keep infections at bay. The innate immune system is fast-responding and unspecialised, while the adaptive develops tailored defences against specific foes with each infection it encounters. How precisely the innate system works, or even whether some parts might be redundant accompaniments to the adaptive elements, is not fully understood. A new study examined the effect of blocking one component of the innate system, group 2 innate lymphoid cells, in mice. Without these cells, the inflammatory response – key to staving off attacks – could not develop properly, and mucus (yellow in the infected intestine cross-section pictured) production was limited meaning parasites could not be expelled. Allergy responses were also worsened by a lack of these cells, highlighting the innate immune system’s integral importance, and perhaps pointing to new treatment approaches.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image by Patrycja M. Topczewska from work by Katja J. Jarick and colleagues
• Department of Microbiology, Infectious Diseases and Immunology, Charité–Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
• Image copyright held by the original authors
• Research published in Nature, November 2022