论文部分内容阅读
Conceptually, animal immunity is divided into two interrelated aspects, adaptive and innate immunity.The origin of vertebrate adaptive immunity is of particular interest for immunologists to study.Recent discovery of VLR (variable leu-rich repeat) as the brand new antigen receptor of lymphocytes in lamprey suggests the presence of alternative adaptive immunity in jawless vertebrate.The identification of the orthologs of Ig, TCR, MHC and RAG1/2 in invertebrates prompt immunologists to trace the origin of adaptive immunity into more basal species so as to resolve such intriguing question.Our group have conducted a systemic analysis on the immune system of amphioxus, the key species at the transition from invertebrates to vertebrates,for last 10 years, in order to address this question.Firstly, we identified the lymphocyte-like cells along with related transcription factors and the signaling molecules for lymphoid proliferation and differentiation in the gill and intestinal regions of amphioxus.