The biology
The book links three things: bacterial restriction–modification, vertebrate adaptive immunity, and cancer — all systems that identify and destroy what does not belong. Immunity recognises a foreign antigen and acts. Its core is DNA rearrangement — shuffling and altering gene segments to make a multitude of slightly different antibody genes, enough to bind millions of antigens. The response is acquired: weak on first exposure, faster and stronger on the second.
Self and not-self, matched on the address
Antibody diversity is the address rewriting part of itself to recognise the foreign — millions of coordinates generated from a few segments by shuffling. And the recognition is the same operation seen in the bacterium's restriction system (Paper 9) and in anti-cancer surveillance (Paper 23): self versus non-self, matched on the address. One faculty — knowing what belongs to the coordinate and what does not — worn at three scales, from a bacterium's methyl marks to a vertebrate's immune memory.
Where this departs from current science
| Current science says | The Force of Time says |
|---|---|
| Immunity, restriction, and cancer surveillance are three separate systems. | They are one address-matching operation — self/non-self read on the coordinate — at three scales. |
| Antibody diversity is combinatorial gene-segment shuffling. | It is the address rewriting part of itself to recognise the foreign. |
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This paper, and any information drawn from it, may be used freely provided the reference attribution to Stephen Daubney and The Daubney Foundation is recognised.