Sensing microbes by diverse hosts

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Abstract
The meeting ‘Pattern Recognition Proteins and Receptors’ took place in Trest, Czech Republic, between 14 and 18 May, 2003. It was sponsored by EMBO with additional support from the Sereno Foundation and AstraZeneca and was organized by K Söderhall, M Bilej, A Beshin and P De Baetselier. ![][1] Innate immunity has a key role in combating microbial infections in all animals. The innate immune response is activated by receptors known as pattern recognition receptors (PRRs), which recognize surface determinants that are conserved among microbes but are absent in the host, including components such as lipopolysaccharides (LPSs), peptidoglycans (PGs) and mannans (Medzhitov & Janeway, 1998). These pathogen‐associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) therefore represent an ideal signature for the presence of infectious agents. After a PAMP is recognized, PRRs activate several complex signalling cascades, which ultimately regulate the transcription of target genes that encode effectors and regulators of the immune response. A transcription profile specific to one class of pathogens can be achieved through the linkage of recognition receptors to distinct signalling pathways. The concept of ‘pattern recognition’ has been essential in unifying the work that has accumulated on the innate immune responses in a large variety of invertebrate and vertebrate species. During the past few years, significant progress has been made towards our understanding of pathogen detection. Recent insights into the function and signalling of PRRs were presented at an EMBO workshop, and here we review the most important issues and focus on the new concepts that emerged during this excellent symposium. ### The Drosophila antimicrobial response The Drosophila antimicrobial response has been the focus of intense studies during recent years. The Toll and immune deficiency (Imd) pathways have emerged as simple paradigms of innate immune‐response regulation in animals, and have shown how two distinct signalling pathways can modulate the expression of a complex transcriptional programme in response … [1]: pending:yes