Beginning of the end of (understanding) the immune response.
The algorithm about the workings of the immune system should incorporate in its basic form the ability to explain several basic features: the ability to reject pathogens, to respond differently to invasions by class switching, to retain memory of rejecting past infections, the regulatory T-cell formation and the acquisition of a life-long antigen tolerance in adults. The Danger and the two self-non-self theories - Pathogenicity (Janeway) and the Associated Antigen Recognition (Langman and Cohn) - cannot explain satisfactorily one or more of these issues. By failing to find appropriate solutions to help their corresponding basic algorithms to be operative, these theories negate, instead of finding explanations (no matter how complicated) for interpretations of certain results, one of them being the existence of a regulatory cell as a physiological component of the immune system. On the other hand, the integrity model can incorporate regulatory T cells in a basic algorithm of the workings of the immune system, explaining it as a downregulation of the immune response provided advantageous commensalism prevails over disadvantages of parasitism.
Dembic
Z
Z
Department of Oral Biology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway. zlatko.dembic@odont.uio.no
D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D003198:Computer Simulation; D006801:Humans; D007107:Immune System / Q000502:physiology*; D018448:Models, Immunological