Within peripheral lymphoid organs, complex interactions occur between lymphocytes and antigen-presenting cells during an immune response to antigen. Although there is considerable recognition of the fact that activation of innate immune signaling pathways is necessary for productive adaptive immune responses to occur, a great deal is still unknown about how this coordination is achieved at a molecular level. NF-κB/Rel transcription factors have been the focus of considerable interest over the past few years, in part because they seem ideally positioned to integrate information from both innate and adaptive immune signaling pathways. Recent develoments with gene-targeted knockout mice indicate that NFκB/Rel transcription factors are critical regulators of immune responses at the level of both antigen-presenting cells and lymphocytes.
NF-κB/Rel transcription factors function as dimers held latently in the the cytoplasm of cells by a family of inhibitor IκB proteins (for reviews see references 1–3). There are five...
