Immune sentinel cells initiate immune responses to pathogens and tissue injury and are capable of producing highly stimulus-specific responses. Insight into the mechanisms underlying such specificity has come from the identification of regulatory factors and biochemical pathways, as well as the definition of signaling circuits that enable combinatorial and temporal coding of information. Here, we review the multi-layered molecular mechanisms that underlie stimulus-specific gene expression in macrophages. We categorize components of inflammatory and anti-pathogenic signaling pathways into five layers of regulatory control and discuss unifying mechanisms determining signaling characteristics at each layer. In this context, we review mechanisms that enable combinatorial and temporal encoding of information, identify recurring regulatory motifs and principles, and present strategies for integrating experimental and computational approaches toward the understanding of signaling specificity in innate immunity.

免疫前哨细胞启动对病原体和组织损伤的免疫反应，并能够产生高度刺激特异性反应。对这种特异性背后的机制的洞察来自对调节因子和生化途径的识别，以及对信息进行组合和时间编码的信号回路的定义。在这里，我们回顾了巨噬细胞中刺激特异性基因表达的多层分子机制。我们将炎症和抗病原体信号通路的组成部分分为五层调节控制，并讨论确定每一层信号特征的统一机制。在这种情况下，我们回顾了能够对信息进行组合和时间编码的机制，