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Updated: Aug 23, 2026

T Cells Capture Bacteria by Transinfection from Dendritic Cells
Published on: January 13, 2016
If the "adaptive" immune system can recognize a significant portion of the pathogenic universe to which the "innate"
1Conceptual Immunology Group, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, 10010 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA. cohn@salk.edu
Abstract:
The "adaptive" immune repertoire functionally recognizes pathogens (and their toxic products) that the "innate" defense system misses. This requires that the self-nonself discrimination and the regulation of effector output be dependent primarily on somatic learning mechanisms (i.e. on the somatically generated, large, random "adaptive" immune paratopes repertoire).
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