Word: nonself
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...view of life. Nature is alive. The barest Antarctic rock is crawling with microbes. Viruses float on the dust. Bacteria help digest our food for us. According to modern evolutionary biology, our very cells are cities of formerly independent organisms. On the molecular level, the distinction between self and nonself disappears in a blur of semipermeable membranes. Nature goes on within and without us. It wafts through us like a breeze through a screened porch. On the biological level, the world is a seamless continuum of energy and information passing back and forth, a vast complicated network of exchange. Speech...
...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 have the ability to distinguish between self and nonself, which is the crucial distinction...
...more devastating errors of the immune system involves its failure to distinguish between self and nonself, resulting in so-called autoimmune diseases, which can be crippling and sometimes fatal. Dozens of disorders that once mystified doctors are now thought to be autoimmune. Among them: Type 1 diabetes, myasthenia gravis, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus. In these and other autoimmune diseases, the immune system mounts a selective and ferocious assault against parts of the body, destroying cells or cell components that it mistakenly identifies as alien...