title: A Commentary on a Workshop 'To Reveal the Foundational Concepts of Immune Regulation' (i.e. Tolerance).
abstract: A summary of the workshop with its laudatory goal 'to reveal the foundational concepts in immunology' was recently published in SJI with an invitation to outsiders to comment. In the end, a foundational concept is one upon which we can all agree. This requires debate and meaningful experimentation. The goal of this commentary is to provide some of that. Most of immunology is description of an observation (i.e. a fact). However, what ties all the facts together as a discipline is theory or conceptualization that gives a general context to observation and predicts the next step. This is what is meant by 'foundational concepts'.
authors.affiliation: Conceptual Immunology Group, The Salk Institute, La Jolla, CA, USA.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cohn
mesh_terms: D056704:Adaptive Immunity / Q000276:immunology; D000818:Animals; D000938:Antigen-Presenting Cells / Q000276:immunology*; D001324:Autoantigens / Q000276:immunology*; D001402:B-Lymphocytes / Q000276:immunology*; D003226:Congresses as Topic; D006801:Humans; D007108:Immune Tolerance / Q000276:immunology*; D007113:Immunity, Innate / Q000276:immunology; D011946:Receptors, Antigen / Q000276:immunology; D015398:Signal Transduction / Q000276:immunology
chemical_list: D001324:Autoantigens; D011946:Receptors, Antigen