Connections between antiviral defense and autoimmunity

Recent advances have revealed a fundamental contradiction in antiviral immunity: innate immune sensors that detect nucleic acids mediate both protective immunity to infection and pathological autoimmune disease. Thus, the study of the mechanics of nucleic acid detection will provide insight into how these systems are inappropriately triggered in autoimmunity, and, conversely, the study of autoimmune disease triggered by these sensors will tell us more about how they are linked to activation of adaptive immunity.