Immunogenetics

The term Immunogenetics consists of the concepts of immunology and genetics. This is according to MeSH definition ( NCBI / NLM, 1971) to " a sub-discipline of genetics, which deals with the genetic basis of the immune response. "

Genetics ( from the Greek genea γενεά, descent ' and γένεσις génesis, origin ' ) is the science that examines the passing of traits from one generation to the next. The genes of an organism ( segments of DNA ) and the passing of genes from parent to child generation of an organism in the context of the possible variations of heredity are the basic units of his inheritance.

Immunology is the study of the biological and biochemical bases of physical defense against pathogens such as bacteria, viruses and fungal infections (fungi ) and other exogenous substances such as biological toxins, and environmental toxins, and beyond of trouble and malfunctions of these defense mechanisms. In addition to these external influences on the organism, there are adverse reactions to the body's own cells, for example in the context of physical response to cancers and the pathological reaction of the body to healthy cells in the context of autoimmune disease. Immunology is thus a sub-discipline of biology.

This will be all the processes summarized under the concept of Immunogenetics in an organism that are controlled or influenced on the one hand by the genes of the organism and on the other hand play a role in the immunological defense reactions of the organism.

History of Immunogenetics

The history of medicine on the subject of immunology and the immune system goes back to the 19th century, with questions about the preventions and early defense against diseases throughout human development is a crucial task for shamans, medicine men and early " doctors " was. The first Nobel Prize in the field of Immunogenetics, there were 1980 Baruj Benacerraf, Jean Dausset and George Davis Snell for their discoveries of genetic certain cellular surface structures that immunological reactions are controlled.

Current research topics

In the last 20 years, research is being conducted on a variety of different issues of Immunogenetics. The acceleration and the decreasing cost of sequencing of genes have led to an increasing number of academic and commercial research groups intensively deal with this. Current research topics addressed in particular asking questions,

• Which course of forecasts and treatment recommendations to diseases can be created on the basis of genetic dispositions and
• How can these genetic dispositions be influenced by agents ( gene therapy).

A special focus is often on the prognosis and treatment of genetically based autoimmune diseases. In autoimmune diseases are understood in medicine all diseases whose cause is an overreaction of the immune system against the body's own tissues. Mistakenly, the immune system recognizes the body's own tissues as foreign bodies to be controlled. This leads to severe inflammatory reactions that can lead to permanent damage to the affected organs. Autoimmune diseases, in which the onset or progression of the disease may be invested in the individual genome of the organism include, for example, multiple sclerosis, type I diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis or Crohn's disease (an example of an autoimmune disease without a genetic predisposition would be HIV - these is triggered by viruses). Thus, for multiple sclerosis in a much-publicized article in the journal Nature on May 2010 ( Baranzini et al: Genome, epigenome and RNA sequences of monozygotic twins discordant for multiple sclerosis Nature 2010, 464, pp. 1351-1356 - Link. . see below) demonstrated that this disease does not break out due to a genetic variation, the course and the treatability will probably influenced by genetic dispositions. The basis for this work were three sets of identical twins, of which one twin is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, the other not.