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Rich T, Allen R, & Trowsdale J (2000). How low can Toll go?. Trends in Genetics, 16, 292-294. doi:10.1016/S0168-9525(00)02026-6
How far down the phylogenic tree should we look for the origins of innate immunity? We know that mammalian cells respond to microbes using Toll-like signalling systems that are remarkably similar in arthropods. Prototypes of these pathways might have arisen in more primitive phyla (initially, perhaps, to regulate development) and their identification would help us to reconstruct the evolution of this facet of immunity. Elements of Toll pathways exist in plants. Does this mean that the last common ancestor of plants, chordates and arthropods, which was a unicellular eukaryote, expressed a Toll-like pathway, or is a similar developmental logic at work in all multicellular life-forms? To address some of these issues we decided to seek a 'worm' Toll pathway, concentrating on the simple and versatile metazoan, Caenorhabditis elegans.