LA JOLLA, CA — Like a circuit breaker that prevents electrical
wiring from overheating and bringing down the house, a tiny
family of three molecules stops the immune system from mounting
an out-of-control, destructive inflammatory response against
invading pathogens, researchers at the Salk Institute for
Biological Studies have found. Without these critical molecules
— known as TAM receptor tyrosine kinases — patrolling immune
cells on the look-out for danger would never cease activating
the body’s defense system once they find an alien microbe, and
the body would suffer, say the Salk investigators, whose
findings appear in the Dec. 14 issue of the journal Cell. “A
truism in biology is that if you turn something on, you have to
be able to turn it off, and we have found an essential switch
that controls immune inflammation,” said the study’s senior
investigator, Greg Lemke, Ph.D., a professor in the Molecular
Neurobiology Laboratory. “The TAM signaling network represents a
previously unknown, yet powerful and