Word: metchnikoff
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...first stages in its evolution are a mystery. But scientists have deduced from the study of primitive species that rudimentary mechanisms against infection existed in various forms of life more than a billion years ago. The first inkling of such progenitors came in 1883, when Russian Zoologist Elie Metchnikoff stuck a rose thorn into the larva of a starfish and a short time later observed that the thorn had been completely surrounded by cells. The cells were phagocytes. "These little guys go back in evolution a very long way," says Carol Reinisch of the Tufts School of Veterinary Medicine. "They...