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The Primordial VRM System and the Evolution of Vertebrate Immunity

Author: John Stewart

Publisher: R. G. Landes

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13:

This book discusses the evolutionary origin of immunoglobulins and T-cell receptors. The complex interactions between B and T cells in response to external antigens are the major focus of contemporary immunology. This book argues that these interactions may be relatively late evolutionary developments, due to the redeployment of a system invented for other reasons. In other words immunoglobulins did not arise in evolution to fight infection. The author theorizes that the system of variable region moleculars (VRM) arose at the time of the first vertebrates by an endogenous, self-organizing process. This primordial VRM system instituted a molecular ecology, a function so vital that from then on no vertebrate has been able to do without it.

Primordial Immunity

Author: Gregory Beck

Publisher:

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13:

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Primitive species are capable of recognition and defence, thus lessons learned from them can provide a basis for understanding strategies that vertebrate animals have adopted. The papers in this volume explore the mechanisms of multicellular organisms used to distinguish between self and non-self in response to parasitism or infection. Studies of these mechanisms used by primitive species for their defences have extensive implications for understanding the evolution of immunity and problems of human health and disease.

Origin and Evolution of the Vertebrate Immune System

Author: L. Du Pasquier

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2000-02-14

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13:

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The comparative approach to immunology can be traced to the era of Pasteur and Metchnikov in which observations regarding foreign recognition in invertebrates was a factor in the develop ment of the principal concepts that created the foundation of what now is the broad field of immunology. With each major experimental and conceptual breakthrough, the classical, albeit essential, question has been asked "are the immune systems of phylogenetically primitive vertebrates and invertebrates similar to that of mammals?" Somewhat surprisingly for the jawed verte brates, the general answer has been a qualified form of "yes", whereas for agnathans and invertebrate phyla it has been "no" so far. The apparent abruptness in the appearance of the immune system of vertebrates is linked to the introduction of the somatic generation of the diversity of its antigen specific receptors. Therefore the questions regarding the origin and evolution of the specific immune system revolve around this phenomenon. With respect to the origin of the system (aside from the or igin of the rearranging machinery itself, the study of which is still in its infancy) one can ask questions about the cellular and mo lecular contexts in which the mechanism was introduced.

Artificial Immune Systems

Author: Christian Jacob

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2005-08-04

Total Pages: 511

ISBN-13: 3540281754

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This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Artificial Immune Systems, ICARIS 2005, held in Banff, Alberta, Canada, in August 2005. The 37 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 68 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on conceptual, formal, and theoretical frameworks, immunoinformatics, theoretical and experimental studies on artificial immune systems, and applications of artificial immune systems.

Immunity

Author: Alfred I. Tauber

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-01-02

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0190651253

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Modern immunology traditionally conceives of the immune system as providing defense against pathogens. Alfred I. Tauber criticizes this conception of immunity as too narrow, because it discounts much of the immune system's other normal functions. These include active tolerance of nutritional exchanges with the environment and the stabilization of cooperative relationships with resident micro-organisms. An expanded account extends immunity's functional role from singular 'defense' to broadened discernment of environmental 'exchange.' This ecological perspective has profound theoretical implications, for the basic notion of immune identity is reconfigured: highlighting the organism as a holobiont (a consortium of diverse organisms living in cooperative relationships) challenges prevailing concepts of individuality and the self/nonself dichotomy heretofore organizing immune theory. Indeed, if theoretical interest is focused on the challenges of maintaining immune balance in the full ecological context of the organism, then immune regulation assumes new complexity. Tauber maintains that the key to unravelling that puzzle requires a critical re-assessment of the cognitive processes that underlie immune effector functions. Accordingly, he provides the outline of a re-formulated 'cognitive paradigm' that dispenses with agent-based models and adopts an ecologically conceived understanding of perception and information processing. The implications of this revised configuration of immunity and its deconstructed notions of individuality and selfhood have wide significance for philosophers and life scientists working in immunology, ecology, and the cognitive sciences.

Darwin's Black Box

Author: Michael J. Behe

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2001-04-04

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0743214854

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The groundbreaking, "seminal work" (Time) on intelligent design that dares to ask, was Darwin wrong? In 1996, Darwin's Black Box helped to launch the intelligent design movement: the argument that nature exhibits evidence of design, beyond Darwinian randomness. It sparked a national debate on evolution, which continues to intensify across the country. From one end of the spectrum to the other, Darwin's Black Box has established itself as the key intelligent design text—the one argument that must be addressed in order to determine whether Darwinian evolution is sufficient to explain life as we know it. In a major new Afterword for this edition, Behe explains that the complexity discovered by microbiologists has dramatically increased since the book was first published. That complexity is a continuing challenge to Darwinism, and evolutionists have had no success at explaining it. Darwin's Black Box is more important today than ever.

The Ecology and Evolution of Inducible Defenses

Author: Ralph Tollrian

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2021-04-13

Total Pages: 395

ISBN-13: 0691228191

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Inducible defenses--those often dramatic phenotypic shifts in prey activated by biological agents ranging from predators to pathogens--are widespread in the natural world. Yet research on the inducible defenses used by vertebrates, invertebrates, and plants in terrestrial, marine, and freshwater habitats has largely developed along independent lines. Ralph Tollrian and Drew Harvell seek to change that here. By bringing together leading researchers from all fields to review common themes and explore emerging ideas, this book represents the most current and comprehensive survey of knowledge about the ecology and evolution of inducible defenses. Contributors examine organisms as different as unicellular algae and higher vertebrates, and consider defenses ranging from immune systems to protective changes in morphology, behavior, chemistry, and life history. The authors of the review chapters, case studies, and theoretical studies pinpoint unifying factors favoring the evolution of inducible defenses. Throughout, the volume emphasizes a multidisciplinary approach, integrating applied and theoretical ecology, evolution, genetics, and chemistry. In addition, Harvell and Tollrian provide an introduction and a conclusion that review the current state of knowledge in the field and identify areas for future research. The contributors, in addition to the editors, are May Berenbaum, Arthur Zangerl, Johannes Järemo, Juha Tuomi, Patric Nilsson, Anurag Agrawal, Richard Karban, Marcel Dicke, Ellen Van Donk, Miquel Lürling, Winfried Lampert, Simon Frost, John Gilbert, Hans-Werner Kuhlmann, Jürgen Kusch, Klaus Heckmann, Luc De Meester, Piotr Dawidowicz, Erik van Gool, Carsten Loose, Stanley Dodson, Christer Brönmark, Lars Pettersson, Anders Nilsson, Bradley Anholt, Earl Werner, Curtis Lively, Frederick Adler, Daniel Grünbaum, and Wilfried Gabriel.

Advances in Artificial Life

Author: Wolfgang Banzhaf

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2011-03-31

Total Pages: 922

ISBN-13: 354039432X

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This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th European Conference on Artificial Life, ECAL 2003, held in Dortmund, Germany in September 2003. The 96 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from more than 140 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on artificial chemistries, self-organization, and self-replication; artificial societies; cellular and neural systems; evolution and development; evolutionary and adaptive dynamics; languages and communication; methodologies and applications; and robotics and autonomous agents.

Pre-mRNA Processing

Author: Angus I. Lamond

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-11-11

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 3662223252

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he past fifteen years have seen tremendous growth in our understanding of T the many post-transcriptional processing steps involved in producing func tional eukaryotic mRNA from primary gene transcripts (pre-mRNA). New processing reactions, such as splicing and RNA editing, have been discovered and detailed biochemical and genetic studies continue to yield important new insights into the reaction mechanisms and molecular interactions involved. It is now apparent that regulation of RNA processing plays a significant role in the control of gene expression and development. An increased understanding of RNA processing mechanisms has also proved to be of considerable clinical importance in the pathology of inherited disease and viral infection. This volume seeks to review the rapid progress being made in the study of how mRNA precursors are processed into mRNA and to convey the broad scope of the RNA field and its relevance to other areas of cell biology and medicine. Since one of the major themes of RNA processing is the recognition of specific RNA sequences and structures by protein factors, we begin with reviews of RNA-protein interactions. In chapter 1 David Lilley presents an overview of RNA structure and illustrates how the structural features of RNA molecules are exploited for specific recognition by protein, while in chapter 2 Maurice Swanson discusses the structure and function of the large family of hnRNP proteins that bind to pre-mRNA. The next four chapters focus on pre-mRNA splicing.

Organellar Proton-ATPases

Author: Nathan Nelson

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-06-29

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 3662222655

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THE WORLD OF PROTON PUMPS Nathan Nelson uite frequently an observer looks at a life phenomenon and asks ~himself why nature took this route out of several other available mec anisms. In order to understand this challenge he may first try to reconstruct the evolution of the process taking into account the main driving forces that were assumed to exist during the last 3. 5 billion years on earth. Now we know that the electrochemical gradient of protons is the universal high-energy intermediate produced and uti lized by every living cell in nature. This high energy intermediate is an expression of different concentrations of active protons in the two faces of biological membranes. Why then did nature elect to utilize a pre dominantly electrochemical gradient of protons and no other ion? The answer to this question may lie in the environment in which the first living creatures evolved. Some of them may have been challenged by an acidic environment that lowered their internal pH (by a proton leak through their membranes) to lethal levels. To counteract these inci dents proton pumps evolved. Two independent systems were devel oped. One was a proton pump coupled to energetically downhill vectorial electron transport across membranes and the second was an ATP-dependent proton pump. Both of them pump protons outward from the cells generating an electrochemical gradient of protons.