In 1960 Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet received the Noble Prize in Physiology and Medicine. He titled his Nobel Lecture ¿Immunological Recognition of Self¿ emphasizing the central argument of immunological tolerance in ¿How does the vertebrate organism recognize self from nonself in this the immunological sense¿and how did the capacity evolve.¿ The concept of self is linked to the concept of biological self identity. All organisms, from bacteria to higher animals, possess recognition systems to defend themselves from nonself. Even in the context of the limited number of metazoan phyla that have been studied in detail, we can now describe many of the alternative mechanism of immune recognition that have emerged at varying points in phylogeny. Two different arms¿the innate and adaptive immune system¿have emerged at different moments in evolution, and they are conceptually different. The ultimate goals of immune biology include reconstructing the molecular networks underlying immune processes.

Covers different aspects of the emergence of immune systems in the evolution of life

The Origin of the Bacterial Immune Response.- The Evolution of Self During the Transition to Multicellularity.- Glyconectin Glycans as the Self-Assembling Nano-Molecular-Velcrosystem Mediating Self-Nonself Recognition and Adhesion Implicated in Evolution of Multicellularity.- Neglected Biological Features in Cnidarians Self-Nonself Recognition.- Intracellular Inflammatory Sensors For Foreign Invaders and Substances of Self-Origin.- Nonself Perception in Plant Innate Immunity.- How Did Flowering Plants Learn to Avoid Blind Date Mistakes? Self-Incompatibility in Plants and Comparisons with Nonself Rejection in the Immune Response.- Signaling Pathways that Regulate Life and Cell Death: Evolution of Apoptosis in the Context of Self-Defense.- Sensing Necrotic Cells.- Sensing Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress.- Autophagy and Self-Defense.- Viruses and Host Evolution: Virus-Mediated Self Identity.- The Evolution of Adaptive Immunity.- Epigenetic Code and Self-Identity.- Viral Immunomodulatory Proteins: Usurping Host Genes as a Survival Strategy.- The Emergence of the Major Histocompatilibility Complex.- MHC Signaling During Social Communication.