Langman R E, Cohn M
Conceptual Immunology Group, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, 10010 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA.
Int Immunol. 1999 Jun;11(6):865-70. doi: 10.1093/intimm/11.6.865.
Drawing on metaphors from linguistics and information theory, Atlan and Cohen challenge us to take a very different view of the immune system, one that engages in constant chatter among the constituents and allows the immune system to arrive at a decision about what to, and not to, destroy. Our commentary responds to this challenge and points out many logical biological flaws in their view. We seem to agree that specificity is important, and that there is some kind of somatic selection process at work to distinguish self from non-self. Our analysis of models depends on the basis of how self and non-self are separated. There are only two possibilities, time or space; and space-based models are all but ruled out. There are two major kinds of time-based model, one based on the time taken for an organism to develop from embryo to adult, the other based on the time taken for a cell to differentiate from one state to another. With so many ambiguities in the metaphors and so little attention to mechanism, the Atlan and Cohen challenge is, we suspect, based on time measured in cell differentiation units. They also make the common mistake of assuming repertoires that are transcendental in size (>10(10)), making it impossible to have a functional immune system in animals smaller than a rabbit--a feature that does not instill confidence in the biological relevance of such models.
阿特兰和科恩借鉴语言学和信息论中的隐喻，促使我们对免疫系统采取截然不同的观点，即免疫系统各组成部分之间持续进行交流，从而使免疫系统能够决定攻击什么和不攻击什么。我们的评论回应了这一挑战，并指出了他们观点中许多逻辑上的生物学缺陷。我们似乎都认同特异性很重要，并且存在某种体细胞选择过程在发挥作用以区分自我和非自我。我们对模型的分析取决于自我与非自我如何区分的依据。只有两种可能性，时间或空间；基于空间的模型几乎被排除。有两种主要的基于时间的模型，一种基于生物体从胚胎发育到成年所需的时间，另一种基于细胞从一种状态分化到另一种状态所需的时间。鉴于隐喻中存在如此多的模糊性且对机制关注甚少，我们怀疑阿特兰和科恩的挑战是基于以细胞分化单位衡量的时间。他们还犯了一个常见的错误，即假设库的大小是超验的（>10¹⁰），这使得小于兔子的动物不可能拥有功能性免疫系统——这一特征无法让人对这类模型的生物学相关性产生信心。
