Antigen-receptor degeneracy and immunological paradigms.
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.
Cohen
Irun R
IR
The Department of Immunology, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, 76100 Israel. irun.cohen@weizmann.ac.il
Hershberg
Uri
U
Solomon
Sorin
S
D000818:Animals; D000941:Antigens / Q000276:immunology*; D006801:Humans; D011946:Receptors, Antigen / Q000276:immunology*
D000941:Antigens; D011946:Receptors, Antigen