Induction Mechanisms

Abstract

The diversity of agents able to stimulate the synthesis of interferons defies all attempts to recognize common inducer structure. Indeed, the finding of several distinct classes of interferon inducing substances suggests there might be several different interferon induction mechanisms. The following discussions will review the data showing that all interferon appearing after Stimulation by each of the inducers are synthesized de novo and that different inducers can induce interferons in different cell populations. I shall evaluate the data for or against the unifying hypothesis that all viruses, RNA or DNA-containing, trigger interferon production by forming “the inducing structure” doublestranded RNA, and shall describe alternative induction mechanisms that have been proposed.