Science Signaling Podcast: 27 May 2014

This Podcast features an interview with Gideon Schreiber, senior author of a Research Article that appears in the 27 May 2014 issue of Science Signaling, about an engineered variant of a type I interferon that elicits only antiviral responses. Interferons are major components of the innate immune response and serve as a link between the innate and adaptive immune responses. Type I interferons stimulate the expression of many genes that affect various cellular processes, including limiting the spread of viruses between cells, suppressing cell proliferation, and modulating the immune response. Levin et al. identified a variant of the type I interferon IFN-alpha 2 that elicits antiviral responses without suppressing cell proliferation or activating immunomodulatory genes.