Further notes about the morphostasis concept – split files

(37) Specific and non–specific pathogenic stimuli

I have suggested that the adaptive immune system, rather than remembering a specific pathogen, is remembering the signature of a specific pathogenic stimulus. This signature is likely to be made up of a suite of epitopes that are encountered when a certain pathogen (pathogenic agent) provokes its disease. The biotic or abiotic nature of the pathogen is not yet assumed; it could, for example, be abiotic (like asbestos fibres) or biotic (like measles virus). Non–specific pathogens, like trauma, do not expose or present strange epitopes to the adaptive immune system. All they present, unless there is wound contamination, is damaged self tissues. Specific pathogenic stimuli are those suites of epitopes that include a number of unusual molecules that have not been previously encountered as part of tidy apoptotic debris (this latter is the suite of epitopes that induce adaptive immune system tolerance). These strange epitopes will be presented along with non–specific epitopes (damaged self) and the "job lot" provokes an adaptive immune response. This is why we are left with the illusion that microbes are actively "hunted and killed", because strange epitopes provoke specific antigenic responses. Micro–organisms regularly (but not inevitably) present strange epitopes that can than be utilised as the dominant pegs upon which to hang a focalised and very aggressive inflammatory response.