“The evolution of self/nonself discrimination in adaptive immunity” seminar run by StaPa

On september 8, the Institut Pasteur's association for young researchers, StaPa, is running a seminar entitled "The evolution of self/nonself discrimination in adaptive immunity" led by Thomas Boehm, director at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg.

To distinguish between self and nonself is a fundamental requirement of life. Self/nonself discrimination occurs at all levels of the evolutionary tree and is involved in diverse biological events, ranging from mate choice and social recognition to immune defense. All systems of self/nonself discrimination also require mechanisms to maintain quality control. Quality control ensures that the specificity of recognition is monitored. Moreover, the mechanism of quality control determines the unit of selection (that is, the individual or the cell) and the timescale on which selection operates (that is, an evolutionary or individual timescale).
It appears that during the course of evolution the distinction between the mechanisms for self/nonself discrimination and the strategies implemented for quality control became increasingly blurred. Hence, the strategies of quality control for the evolutionarily recent (and more sophisticated) systems for self/nonself discrimination, such as those employed in the adaptive immune system of higher vertebrates, may have evolved from ancient systems of self/nonself discrimination.

This event will take place iin amphitheatre Emile Duclaux at 2:00pm.