Variation in the human immune system is largely driven by non-heritable influences
By Petter Brodin, Vladimir Jojic, S. Bhattacharya, C. Angel, David Furman, Shai Shen-Orr, C. Dekker, G. Swan, Atul J. Butte, Holden T. Maecker and 1 more. Cell, 2015
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SUMMARY There is considerable heterogeneity in immunological parameters between individuals, but its sources are largely unknown. To assess the relative contribution of heritable versus non-heritable factors, we have performed a systems-level analysis of 210 healthy twins between 8–82 years of age. We measured 204 different parameters, including cell population frequencies, cytokine responses, and serum proteins, and found that 77% of these are dominated (> 50% of variance) and 58% almost completely determined (> 80% of variance) by non-heritable influences. In addition, some of these parameters become more variable with age, suggesting the cumulative influence of environmental exposure. Similarly, the serological responses to seasonal influenza vaccination are also determined largely by non-heritable factors, likely due to repeated exposure to different strains. Lastly, in MZ twins discordant for cytomegalovirus infection, over half of all parameters are affected. These results highlight the largely reactive and adaptive nature of the immune system in healthy individuals.
Subfields: Epidemiology, Immunology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/198a2e92968f82204f941f83dfd2e702459dcd63
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Citations in the corpus
- Immune System Dysregulation During Spaceflight: Potential Countermeasures for Deep Space Exploration Missions (2018, background): “) leading to epigenetic changes in gene expression in determining specific individual responses to various environmental antigen challenges (105).”
- The gut microbiome: Relationships with disease and opportunities for therapy (2018, background): “, 2016), in parallel with changes in immune status (Brodin et al., 2015), have been observed when monozygotic twins reside in distinct environments.”
- Stereotypic Immune System Development in Newborn Children (2018, background): “Recent systems-level analyses in humans have shown that environmental influences explain most of the overall variation among healthy individuals (Brodin et al., 2015; Orrù et al., 2013; Patin et al., 2018; Roederer et al., 2015) and that such environmental influences from infections, vaccines, nutri”