Death receptor signaling and autoimmunity

In recent years, it has become clear that self-nonself discrimination by the immune system is driven not so much by the specificities of the antigen receptors themselves, but by ligand-receptor systems that sense the presence of foreign pathogens (toll-like receptors) and those that regulate the balance between cellular proliferation and programmed cell death (tumor necrosis factor [TNF] family ligands and receptors). Interestingly, these two receptor families share a number of common signaling pathways, mediated by the cytoplasmic proteins containing death domains and TRAF domains, which trigger the complementary processes of programmed cell death and inflammation. Both humans and mice with genetic defects in the TNF-receptor family member Fas accumulate abnormal lymphocytes and develop systemic autoimmunity. These findings highlighted the importance of this TNF-receptor family member in the homeostasis of the immune system. In particular, the Fas receptor has been shown to be important in immunoreceptor-mediated apoptosis of activated T and B lymphocytes. Six members of the TNF-receptor superfamily share a common signaling domain with Fas, termed the death domain, that directly links these receptors to the apoptotic machinery of the cell, and, collectively, these receptors have been designated as "death receptors." We are currently investigating a number of important unresolved issues in this field, including: (1) how susceptibility to apoptosis through death receptors is regulated, (2) how Fas and related death receptors function in the maintenance of self-tolerance and homeostasis in the major cell types of the immune system, and (3) recently described nonapoptotic lymphocyte activation signals that use components of death receptor signaling.