Signal integration, network complexities and genetic programming render the immune system ready to react to challenges from without and within.
The complexity of decision making in the immune system is illustrated by the controversy surrounding the CD4 versus CD8 T cell lineage choice in the thymus. The long-lasting debate between a stochastic or selective model versus an instructive model has elegantly evolved into what we now call the kinetic signaling model of lineage choice, which proposes that asymmetric changes in CD4 and CD8 expression induced by signaling from the T cell antigen receptor cause distinct persistence of the signal depending on the class of MHC that engages the receptor.
Nature Immunology 11, 645 (2010) doi:10.1038/ni0810-645
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