IUBio

"Danger" or "Alarm"?

D Forsdyke forsdyke1 at home.com
Thu Feb 17 18:42:10 EST 2000


The word "danger" is currently popular among immunologists. 
However, "alarm" (Forsdyke, 1995) may be preferable, since it 
conveys the sense of a distinct call to action, whereas 
"danger" is an attribute which leads one to beware, or keep away. 

    Once a critical binary discrimination event is made:

                    friend or foe, 

                    not-dangerous or dangerous, 

                    self or not-self, 

 an alarm either is not, or is, activated.

     As far as bodily systems are concerned, "not-self" is 
potentially a foe and dangerous, while "self" is potentially 
a friend and not-dangerous. When "self" becomes dangerous, 
then it may be because some body component has begun to manifest
unfriendly, dangerous, not-self, attributes. The yard-stick for
measuring the degree of unfriendliness or danger, is the degree 
of conversion to not-self. 

     Thus, "self" is the ULTIMATE FRAME OF REFERENCE in a 
biological system. Self is that which is encoded in your 
genes at the time of your first appearance on this planet. 
Genes which change during your life (so that different gene 
products are synthesized) may either be considered as still 
"self" (e.g. antibody variable region genes), or be considered
as transformed to "not-self" (e.g. a potential oncogene, ... 
which you hope the immune system will attend to).

    I have an uncomfortable feeling that I have not thought this
matter through as thoroughly as I should have done. Advice/input/
opinion would be welcome. For more, see the URL below.

Donald Forsdyke. Discussion Leader. Bionet.immunology
http://post.queensu.ca/~forsdyke/prions.htm




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