Supramolecular organizing centers (SMOCs) as signaling machines in innate immune activation

Innate immunity offers the first line of defense against infections and other types of danger such as tumorigenesis. Its discovery provides tremendous therapeutic opportunities for numerous human diseases. Delving into the structural basis of signal transduction by innate immune receptors, our lab has recently helped to establish the new paradigm in which innate immune receptors transduce ligand-binding signals through formation of higher-order assemblies containing intracellular adapters, signaling enzymes and their substrates. These large signalosome assemblies may be visible under light microscopy as punctate structures in the µm scale, connecting to the underlying molecular structures in the nm scale. They drive proximity-induced enzyme activation, and provide a mechanism for signaling amplification by nucleated polymerization. These supramolecular signaling complexes also open new questions on their cellular organization and mode of regulation, pose challenges to our methodology, and afford valuable implications in drug discovery against these medically important pathways.