To be or Not to be ridded?--That is the question addressed by the associative antigen recognition model

Abstract

The reasons that germline-encoded recognitive sites cannot sort the immune system's large and random somatically generated repertoire into anti-Not-to-be-ridded ('self ') and anti-To-be-ridded ('nonself ') specificities are analysed. The immune system cannot use 'nonself '-markers of To-be-ridded antigens ('Danger', toll receptors, pathogenicity, localization, etc.) to sort the repertoire; it may, however, use them to determine the magnitude and class of the effector response.