Читать книгу Immunology - Richard Coico - Страница 22

The adaptive immune response has several generalized features that characterize it and distinguish it from other physiological systems, such as circulation, respiration, and reproduction. These features are as follows.

 Specificity is the ability to discriminate among different molecular entities and to respond only to those uniquely required, rather than making a random, undifferentiated response.

 Adaptiveness is the ability to respond to previously unseen molecules that may in fact never have naturally existed before on Earth.

 Discrimination between self and nonself is a cardinal feature of the specificity of the immune response; it is the ability to recognize and respond to molecules that are foreign (nonself) and to avoid making a response to those molecules that are self. This distinction, and the recognition of antigen, is conferred by specialized cells (lymphocytes) that bear on their surface antigen‐specific receptors.

 Memory, a property shared with the nervous system, is the ability to recall previous contact with a foreign molecule and respond to it in a learned manner, that is, with a more rapid and larger response. Another term often used to describe immunological memory is anamnestic response.

When you reach the end of this book, you should understand the cellular and molecular bases of these features of the immune response.