This book discusses the evolutionary origin of immunoglobulins and T-cell receptors. The complex interactions between B and T cells in response to external antigens are the major focus of contemporary immunology. This book argues that these interactions may be relatively late evolutionary developments, due to the redeployment of a system invented for other reasons. In other words immunoglobulins did not arise in evolution to fight infection. The author theorizes that the system of variable region moleculars (VRM) arose at the time of the first vertebrates by an endogenous, self-organizing process. This primordial VRM system instituted a molecular ecology, a function so vital that from then on no vertebrate has been able to do without it.
- ISBN10 1570591199
- ISBN13 9781570591198
- Publish Date 1 January 1994
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Publisher Taylor & Francis Inc
- Imprint CRC Press Inc
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 118
- Language English