title: Antigen-receptor degeneracy and immunological paradigms.
abstract: This paper discusses some consequences of the discovery that antigen receptors are degenerate: Immune specificity, in contrast to the tenets of the clonal selection paradigm, must be generated by the immune response down-stream of initial antigen recognition; and specificity is a property of a collective of cells and not of single clones.
authors.affiliation: The Department of Immunology, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, 76100 Israel. irun.cohen@weizmann.ac.il
authors.forename: Irun R
authors.initials: IR
authors.lastname: Cohen
authors.forename: Uri
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Hershberg
authors.forename: Sorin
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Solomon
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000941:Antigens / Q000276:immunology*; D006801:Humans; D011946:Receptors, Antigen / Q000276:immunology*
chemical_list: D000941:Antigens; D011946:Receptors, Antigen