ArticleNature2011
Detection of prokaryotic mRNA signifies microbial viability and promotes immunity.
Article in Nature, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 246 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
246 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 401 citations in OpenAlex.
- Preclinical Evaluation of Baicalin for the Treatment of Diabetic Nephropathy: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Planta medica · 2025Pooled it
- Gamma-irradiated bacille Calmette-Guérin vaccination does not modulate the innate immune response during experimental human endotoxemia in adult males.Journal of immunology research · 2015Trial
- Human TLR8 is activated upon recognition of Borrelia burgdorferi RNA in the phagosome of human monocytes.Journal of leukocyte biology · 2013Trial
- Innate immune sensing of Plasmodium sporozoite cell traversal drives protective T cell responses.Nature microbiology · 2026Article
- Single-cell detection and quantification of the microbiota by MicFLY.Cell host & microbe · 2026Article
- Maternal and infant gut microbiome.iMeta · 2026Review
- Tumor-specific antibodies elicited by engineered bacteria promote bladder cancer immunotherapy in preclinical mouse models.Science translational medicine · 2026Article
- Sensing the spectrum: diverse stimuli for the NLRP3 inflammasome.Communications biology · 2026Review
- An overview of human inflammasomes: Activation and regulation.Journal of immunology (Baltimore, Md. : 1950) · 2026Review
- Phagocytosis: a process that shapes immune responses to engulfed meals.Nature reviews. Immunology · 2026Review
- Article
- The NLRP6 inflammasome is activated by sterile or pathogen-induced endolysosomal damage.The EMBO journal · 2026Article
- Human neutrophils recognize group B streptococciFrontiers in immunology · 2026Article
- Gut bacteria-derived sphingolipids alter innate immune responses to oral cholera vaccine antigens.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Molecular mechanisms and regulation of inflammasome activation and signaling: sensing of pathogens and damage molecular patterns.Cellular & molecular immunology · 2025Review
- Innate detection ofbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Single-cell quantification of the microbiota by flow cytometry: MicFLY.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Avian leukosis virus p15 interacts with interferon regulatory factor 7 to antagonize the cGAS-STING signaling pathway and promote viral replication.Journal of virology · 2025Article
- Biological and clinical implications of a model of surveillance immunity.The Journal of clinical investigation · 2025Review
- SLAMF7 and SLAMF8 receptors shape human plasmacytoid dendritic cell responses to intracellular bacteria.The Journal of clinical investigation · 2025Article
186 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
9 authors at 5 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Live vaccines have long been known to trigger far more vigorous immune responses than their killed counterparts. This has been attributed to the ability of live microorganisms to replicate and express specialized virulence factors that facilitate invasion and infection of their hosts. However, protective immunization can often be achieved with a single injection of live, but not dead, attenuated microorganisms stripped of their virulence factors. Pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs), which are detected by the immune system, are present in both live and killed vaccines, indicating that certain poorly characterized aspects of live microorganisms, not incorporated in dead vaccines, are particularly effective at inducing protective immunity. Here we show that the mammalian innate immune system can directly sense microbial viability through detection of a special class of viability-associated PAMPs (vita-PAMPs). We identify prokaryotic messenger RNA as a vita-PAMP present only in viable bacteria, the recognition of which elicits a unique innate response and a robust adaptive antibody response. Notably, the innate response evoked by viability and prokaryotic mRNA was thus far considered to be reserved for pathogenic bacteria, but we show that even non-pathogenic bacteria in sterile tissues can trigger similar responses, provided that they are alive. Thus, the immune system actively gauges the infectious risk by searching PAMPs for signatures of microbial life and thus infectivity. Detection of vita-PAMPs triggers a state of alert not warranted for dead bacteria. Vaccine formulations that incorporate vita-PAMPs could thus combine the superior protection of live vaccines with the safety of dead vaccines.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.