The gap left behind by
'a cytokine switches it on'
Every immunology course repeats the same sentence โ IFN-ฮณ matures the DC, IL-12 pushes Th1, TGF-ฮฒ switches to IgA. All pointing at the same thing, and none of them saying what it is.
These twenty lessons are that gap. And they start by showing it is not easy: across ten thousand tumours the cytokine axes do not separate at all. Axes the textbook calls opposites move together.
Lessons 11 to 13 work out why โ and what kind of data you have to bring in before the question can be answered.
How you'll learn
An IFNGโSTAT1 correlation of 0.61 only means something next to the 0.20 you get with ACTB. Every correlation here prints its control, because the floor is not zero.
In lesson 11 not one cytokine axis separates โ there is not a single negative correlation. We show that as it is, then spend two lessons working out why.
Lesson 12 establishes that bulk cannot answer it in principle; lesson 13 asks the same question of single cells. No method can create information the data does not hold.
Before drawing the cytokine map in lesson 19 we write both thresholds down first. Pick your cutoffs after seeing the result and you can draw anything.