In the March issue of the British Society for Immunology’s ‘Immunology News’ Eco-immunology is the cover story and the focus of an article by Eco-immunology and context-specific immunology Branch Lead Professor Kathryn Else and Dr Iris Mair introducing readers to this fascinating emerging field which merges the worlds of ecology and immunology, aiming to understand how the immune system functions in real-world scenarios.

The article details fieldwork conducted by Professor Else and Dr Mair on the Isle of May, a remote Scottish island that is home to a feral population of house mice, Mus musculus domesticus, the same species as laboratory mice, which allows researchers to validate controlled laboratory models in a relevant natural context.

So when conducting collaborative work across lab mice, wild mice, and humans, researchers can assert whether differences in findings across lab mice and humans are likely due to the controlled environment, or a species-specific difference.

Read the full article on the BSI website

Find out more about our Eco-immunology and context-specific immunology Branch by watching the video below

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