Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 1996 Mar 19;93(6):2264-71.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.93.6.2264.

Balancing immunity and tolerance: deleting and tuning lymphocyte repertoires

C C Goodnow  1
Affiliations
Review

Balancing immunity and tolerance: deleting and tuning lymphocyte repertoires

C C Goodnow. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

Immunological self-tolerance is ensured by eliminating or inhibiting self-reactive lymphocyte clones, creating physical or functional holes in the B- and T-lymphocyte antigen receptor repertoires. The nature and size of these gaps in our immune defenses must be balanced against the necessity of mounting rapid immune responses to an everchanging array of foreign pathogens. To achieve this balance, only a fraction of particularly hazardous self-reactive clones appears to be physically eliminated from the repertoire in a manner that fully prevents their recruitment into an antimicrobial immune response. Many self-reactive cells are retained with a variety of conditional and potentially flexible restraints: (i) their ability to be triggered by antigen is diminished by mechanisms that tune down signaling by their antigen receptors, (ii) their ability to carry out inflammatory effector functions can be inhibited, and (iii) their capacity to migrate and persist is constrained. This balance between tolerance and immunity can be shifted, altering susceptibility to autoimmune disease and to infection by genetic or environmental differences either in the way antigens are presented, in the tuning molecules that adjust triggering set points for lymphocyte responses to antigen, or in the effector molecules that eliminate, retain, or expand particular clones.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. J Immunol. 1993 Sep 1;151(5):2355-67 - PubMed
    1. Eur J Immunol. 1993 Sep;23(9):2332-9 - PubMed
    1. Science. 1993 Sep 17;261(5128):1584-8 - PubMed
    1. J Exp Med. 1993 Oct 1;178(4):1247-54 - PubMed
    1. Nat Genet. 1993 Aug;4(4):404-9 - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources