Word: complexity
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...invaders soon receive a rude shock, for they encounter one of nature's most incredible and complex creations: the human immune system. Inside the body, a trillion highly specialized cells, regulated by dozens of remarkable proteins and honed by hundreds of millions of years of evolution, launch an unending battle against the alien organisms. It is high-pitched biological warfare, orchestrated with such skill and precision that illness in the average human being is relatively rare...
...they probe the intricate workings of the immune system, scientists are awestruck. "It is an enormous edifice, like a cathedral," says Nobel Laureate Baruj Benacerraf, president of Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The immune system is compared favorably with the most complex organ of them all, the brain. "The immune system has a phenomenal ability for dealing with information, for learning and memory, for creating and storing and using information," explains Immunologist William Paul of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Declares Dr. Stephen Sherwin, director of clinical research at Genentech: "It's an incredible system. It recognizes molecules...
Upon meeting a virus, the macrophage, which moves about, amoeba-like, on long cellular extensions known as pseudopods (false feet), does more than just ingest the intruder. It has another, even more important function. On its surface, like virtually all body cells, the macrophage carries MHC (for major histocompatibility complex) molecules, protein badges that enable other immune cells to recognize the macrophage as friend, or self, and not attack it. After digesting the virus, the macrophage proudly displays strips of protein from the virus in the grooves of some of its MHC molecules. Once a bit of protein -- which...
...greatest growth has come since 1977, when Graham Allison, an academic with a flair for salesmanship, became dean. Since then, the faculty has increased from 12 to 85 and the student body from 200 to 700 degree students, along with 600 nondegree students. The school's modern red brick complex on the banks of the Charles River contains nine research centers, ranging from the Center for Science and International Affairs to the Institute for the Study of Smoking Behavior and Policy. A new center for press, politics and public policy is headed by former Newsman Marvin Kalb...
...immune system is made up of a trillion specialized cells, regulated by powerful biochemicals, that wage an unending war on alien organisms that cause illness, suffering and death. Spurred along by the AIDS epidemic, research into its complex and wondrous workings is bringing about promising developments in the treatment of deadly diseases. See MEDICINE...