Further notes about the morphostasis concept – split files

(31) More on microbes and the immune system

The dominant current paradigm about infection is that the immune system (whether innate or adaptive) is needed to deal with microbial (pathogenic) invasions. Back in the 1870s and 1980s the adaptive immune system would have been considered the essential and dominant force; now it is the innate immune system. However, my bet is that virtually all cells derived from the fertilised zygote will retain some (effective) capacity to manage low grade infection (the presence of microbes – whether viral or bacterial) using bactericidal peptides and limited phagocytosis of and digestion of microbes. It is fulminating infection (a rapidly growing population of pathogenic microbes) that this low level immunity is unable to contain on its own. Fulminating infections need to generate suitable resources to fuel their proliferation. The intrusion of most microbes species into the host's tissues are probably dealt with effectively by the local population of cells before the microbes are able to proliferate. It is the pathogenic micro–organisms (the debris generating damagers) that manage to overpower this basic response and so trigger an inflammatory response.