Abstract
Innate lymphoid cells (ILCs) are the most recently discovered group of immune cells. Understanding their biology poses many challenges. We discuss here the current knowledge on the appearance of ILC subsets during evolution and propose how the connection between ILCs and T cells contributes to the robustness of immunity and hence to the fitness of the hosts.
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Acknowledgements
We thank S. Carpentier and N. Thakur for comparative transcriptomic analysis; and P. Golstein, Y. Kerdiles and R. Golub for critical reading and advice. Supported by the European Research Council (THINK Advanced Grant; Vivier laboratory), the Ligue Nationale contre le Cancer (Equipe Labellisée; Vivier laboratory), INSERM (Vivier and Van de Pavert laboratories), CNRS (Vivier and Van de Pavert laboratories), Aix-Marseille University (to Centre d'Immunologie de Marseille-Luminy; Vivier and Van de Pavert laboratories), the Institut Universitaire de France (E.V.), A*MIDEX (Van de Pavert laboratory), Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale (AJE20150633331; Van de Pavert laboratory), Agence Nationale de Recherche (Immunodev; Van de Pavert laboratory), the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the US National Institutes of Health (Cooper laboratory), the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (Belz laboratory), the Victorian State Government Operational Infrastructure Support (Belz laboratory), the Australian Government National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia Independent Research Institutes Infrastructure Support Scheme (Belz laboratory) and the Australian Research Council (Belz laboratory).
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E.V. is the cofounder of and a shareholder in Innate Pharma.
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Vivier, E., van de Pavert, S., Cooper, M. et al. The evolution of innate lymphoid cells. Nat Immunol 17, 790–794 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ni.3459
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ni.3459
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