www.morphostasis.org.uk

Tissue homeostasis and immunity: more on models

This article was written in response to [Colin Anderson's article] in the same journal in April 2006.

The complete article is now available (free access) at the [Scand J Immunol].

In retrospect...

There is always something that it would like to change if possible and here it would be this sentence:

"They have often based their discussions around facts that have been established by experimental investigation"

to

"They have often based their discussions around detailed facts that have been established by experimental investigation."

In the first paragraph in the first column of page 175, these extensions to the descriptions at the end of the paragraph may make the process more understandable. The original sentence reads like this:

"Every epitope that reaches lymphocyte attention leads to an activation into either aggression (following catastrophic cell demise: a disruptive encounter) or tolerance (following controlled-cell shutdown: a non-disruptive encounter)."

Clearer understanding should follow by expanding this sentence to:

"Every epitope that reaches lymphocyte attention leads to an activation into either aggression (following catastrophic cell demise and the littering of the intercellular space with the debris of ruptured cells: a disruptive encounter) or tolerance (following controlled-cell shutdown and the rapid and safe disposal of the consequent membrane packaged debris: a non-disruptive encounter)."

And!!!  I have carelessly allowed an "epitope" to appear where it should have been a "paratope" (epitope analogous to antigen and paratope analogous to antibody). This occurs in the second paragraph on page 174 where:

RAG genes cannot, alone, explain how a diverse set of epitopes were suddenly created and simultaneously attached to a complex effector mechanism (all it shows is how the diversity of paratopes was rapidly expanded).

Of course, it should read as below (I managed to get it right within the brackets so it seems strange that I got it wrong in the main sentence!).

RAG genes cannot, alone, explain how a diverse set of paratopes were suddenly created and simultaneously attached to a complex effector mechanism (all it shows is how the diversity of paratopes was rapidly expanded).

I have added a page with the results of a Google search done on the 25th September 2006 for the "purpose of the immune system".  From this it is clear that there was very little doubt, on this date, that the system was seen as a bug hunting and killing mechanism.

In this article I have caricatured the "purpose" I have sensed in various models of the function of the immune system. There are other models championed by authors that I have omitted to caricature here (notably Irun Cohen, Antonio Coutinho and other contributors in the June 2000 edition of Seminars in Immunology).