After the Toll Rush

摘要

You're not feeling well because you have an infection. It might be a urinary tract infection or, perhaps, influenza. How does your immune system detect and eliminate the microscopic intruders that are responsible for infectious diseases? Three papersin this issue by Zhang et al. on page 1522, Heil et al. on page 1526, and Diebold et al. on page 1529 bring us one step closer to answering this question. They describe new information about Toll-like receptors (TLRs). These transmembrane proteins expressed by cells of the innate rmmune system recognize invading microbes and activate signaling pathways that launch immune and inflammatory responses to destroy the invaders. Zhang et al. describe the newest TLR on the block, termed TLR11, which senses bacteria that cause infections of the bladder and kidney, Heil et al. and Diebold et al. demonstrate that TLR7 and TLR8 are required for recognition of the single-stranded RNAs (ssRNAs) found in many viruses. All three reports provide important new information about host defense and point the way toward new therapies to combat infectious diseases.