Abstract
The two pillars of modern immunology have been man and mouse; in both settings, investigators seek to reduce complexity and control environmental conditions. However, the world outside the laboratory is immensely variable; this is not 'noise' but represents the genetic and environmental framework in which the immune system evolved and functions. Placing the ever-growing understanding of immunological mechanisms in wider real-world contexts is a massive but fundamentally important challenge.
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Acknowledgements
We thank A. Pedersen, S. Reece, R. Zamoyska and K. Watt for discussion and comments. Supported by the American Asthma Foundation (R.M.M.), the Kenneth Rainin Foundation (R.M.M.), the Wellcome Trust (R.M.M.) and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (D.H.N.).
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Maizels, R., Nussey, D. Into the wild: digging at immunology's evolutionary roots. Nat Immunol 14, 879–883 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/ni.2643
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ni.2643
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