Research that sheds light on how to improve the immune system

An article published by Technion researchers at nature It provides new information about improving the immune system. The team’s research shows the use and adaptability of improved immunity.

The study was led by researchers from the Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, Prof. Shai Shen-Orr, Dr. Tania Dubovik, and postdoctoral fellow Dr. Martin Lukačišin, in collaboration with Rambam Health Care Campus and Carnegie Mellon University.

The immune system is complex, and its main function is to protect the body from viruses, diseases, and other threats. At the center of this system there are different types of immune cells, each with its own function, which work together to provide the necessary protection for the body.

The interaction between the immune system and the dynamic environment requires constant change. The first mechanism that drives change in the living world is evolution, based on adaptation to environmental changes through the formation of change—spontaneous change.

However, due to natural selection, not all random changes are useful to humans, and even if the change is useful, it is not preserved and passed on to future generations.

Immune system genes evolve faster than other genes in the genome, especially in mammals and birds, showing the importance of the role of the immune system in adapting to the environment in health and disease.

However, the dynamics of its evolution have not been studied in depth until now. This is due to the fact that the immune system is complex, and highly variable between individuals, which has led to a tradition of researching in the laboratory inbred animals for the same genes and raising them in in a clean, bug-free environment.

The Technion researchers used a unique mouse model to develop, which accumulates the same changes as those observed in humans.

Using this model, the researchers measured the variation in immune cell types between mice and identified the genes that control the abundance of each immune cell type. Many of these genes affect the entire body by regulating cell division, migration, and death, by controlling the same type of cell in which they are expressed.

However, among these genes, the researchers found a set of genes that are expressed in one type of cell and control the other.

By analyzing the genomes of 60 vertebrates spanning an evolutionary time of ~600 million years, the researchers showed that the latter group is richer in changes and provides a better opportunity for evolution it creates new interactions between cell types by increasing the difference without much damage.

Said Prof. Shen-Orr and his team, “One of the important effects is the ability of the immune system to develop new functions that depend more on interactions between different cells than within a single cell type, we understand or how to create complex systems.

“This modularity has been observed in the past in the way genes and proteins develop new functions, but it has not been studied in complex communication systems, such as the interacting cells of the immune system.”

Further studies in the development of the body can not only clarify the design behind the immune response, but also contribute to biomimetic solutions, for example, in the system-of-systems that are engineered, which, thus , based on interactions between functional units.