In article <CA9t62.17G at ms.uky.edu>, woodward at seqanal.mi.uky.edu (Jerry Woodward)
says:
>>By the way, what does Immunology Discussion leader Mean? Are you responsible
>for setting up this immunology group?
Sounds a bit pretentious doesn't it? This is what happened around May 1992.
On some prompting from Benny Shomer (Tel Aviv), I contacted David Kristoffersen
and asked whether he would authorize Bionet.immunology. He said fine, he would
put it out for votes, provided he could have a volunteer to act as "Discussion
Leader" (his term). I volunteered. The voting was 102 for and 0 against. So we
were off. At the start Bionet.immunology needed some priming from me, but now
it seems to be pretty autonomous. I enclose below the initial "charter":
From: kristoff at genbank.bio.net (David Kristofferson)
Newsgroups: bionet.announce
Subject: CALL FOR DISCUSSION: bionet.immunology
Keywords: immunology, bionet, BIOSCI
Message-ID: <May.6.15.59.55.1992.6951 at genbank.bio.net>
Date: 6 May 92 22:59:55 GMT
Distribution: bionet
Organization: GenBank Online Service
Approved: bionews-moderator at genbank.bio.net
We have received a proposal for a new newsgroup, bionet.immunology.
Discussion will now be open through 17 May on BIOFORUM/bionet.general
(*not* on BIONEWS/bionet.announce).
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Discussion leader: Donald R. Forsdyke
Department of Biochemistry,
Queen's University,
Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L3N6
Topics of interest would be:
Mechanism of self/not-self discrimination
Evolution and role of MHC polymorphism
Two signal hypotheses
Education of T cells
Education of B cells
T cell and B cell cooperation
G0/G1 switch to activate ICCs (immunologically competent cells)
Mechanisms of ICC deletion or suppression
T cell receptors
B cell receptors
Lymphokines
Signal transduction pathways
Complement
Parasite strategies to avoid the immune response
Why does not a placental mammal not reject the fetal "graft"
Relationship of heat-shock response to intracellular self discrimination
Mechanism of action of cyclosporine
The acute phase response
Role of fever in infections- positive or negative?
Etc.
I would add to this now (July 1993) that it should also be feasible for
immunologists to post abstracts of even full texts of papers (accepted or
submitted). However, the state of the art is not yet sufficiently advanced
for figures. (The physicists seem to have got around the problem)
The most pressing reform, which I have been pushing David Kristoffersen
for, is to change the numbers classifying each message so that postings to
Bionet.Immunology can be CITED in the "regular" paper literature.
Hope this information helps, Sincerely, Don Forsdyke
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