Polly Matzinger has challenged the notion that the immune system is
driven by self/nonself discrimination. She says that the real driving
force is the need to detect and protect against danger. The model is
presented in Annual Review of Immunology, 12:991-1045 1994. I haven't had
time to read it all, but it looks very intriguing. To start, she shows that
there are many different definitions of "self" in use by different
immunologists.
By the way, antigen-presenting cells do not present antigens randomly,
because of opsonization, but they are incapable of self-nonself discrimination.
I seem to recall that self peptides have been eluted from MHC molecules.
Jack Komisar
