The field of mRNA translation has witnessed an impressive expansion in the last decade. The once standard model of translation initiation has undergone, and is still undergoing, a major overhaul, partly due to more recent technical advancements detailing, for example, initiation at non-AUG codons. However, some of the pioneering works in this area have come from immunology and more precisely from the field of antigen presentation to the major histocompatibility class I (MHC-I) pathway. Despite early innovative studies from the lab of Nilabh Shastri demonstrating alternative mRNA translation initiation as a source for MHC-I peptide substrates, the mRNA translation field did not include these into their models. It was not until the introduction of the ribo-sequence technique that the extent of non-canonical translation initiation became widely acknowledged. The detection of peptides on MHC-I molecules by CD8 + T cells is extremely sensitive, making this a superior model system for studying alternative mRNA translation initiation from specific mRNAs. In view of this, we give a brief history on alternative initiation from an immunology perspective and its fundamental role in allowing the immune system to distinguish self from non-self and at the same time pay tribute to the works of Nilabh Shastri.

Department of Medical Biosciences Building 6M Umeå University 901 85 Umeå Sweden

ICCVS University of Gdańsk Science ul Wita Stwosza 63 80 308 Gdańsk Poland

Inserm UMRS1131 Institut de Génétique Moléculaire Université Paris 7 Hôpital St Louis F 75010 Paris France

RECAMO Masaryk Memorial Cancer Institute Zluty kopec 7 65653 Brno Czech Republic

Université Paris Saclay Institut Gustave Roussy Inserm UMR1015 Immunologie des tumeurs et Immunothérapie contre le cancer 94805 Villejuif France

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