The Semiotics of Cellular Communication in the Immune System

ISBN-13: 9783642731471 / Angielski / Miękka / 2011 / 335 str.

Eli E. Sercarz; Franco Celada; N. Avrion Mitchison

Opis

This book introduces into a newly developing branch of biology, the semiotics of cellular communication. The number of known cell subpopulations of lymphocytes, their mediators and receptors has increased tremendously in recent years. An intercellular web of recognition and, in turn, activation or depression of various cellular functions joins all lymphocytes. This interaction of a particular lymphocyte in one subpopulation with the appropriate partner from another subpopulation for regulatory or cooperative purposes requires an efficient and unambiguous system of intercellular recognition and pairing, involving the perception of specific signs by each of the cellular participants.

Spis treści

Section I. Semiotics and Immunology: An Introduction.- On Semiotics and Immunology.- A Nonrestrictive Semiotics of the Immune System.- Possible Contribution of Biosemiotics to the Problem of Communication Among Lymphocytes.- A Note on Some Basic Concepts of the Sign.- to Terms Relevant to Immunological Recognition.- Section II. Conceptual Debt of Semiotics to Immunology.- Signs and Codes in Immunology.- Semiosis for the Immune System But Not the Immune Response or What Can Be Learned About Language by Studying the Immune System?.- Does the Human Mind Use a Logic of Signs Developed by Lymphocytes 108 Years Ago?.- Section III. General Aspects of Communication Within the Immune System.- Contexts in the Cellular Communications: How the Mobile Cells Recognize Right Partner Cells to Talk With?.- Structure and Direction of Message in the Immune Network and Circuits.- Modes of Communication Within the Immune System: Action or Reaction?.- Section IV. Intermezzo.- Of Words, Genes and Music.- Section V. Organizational Patterns, and the Origin of Meaning.- Structural Coupling and the Origin of Meaning in a Simple Cellular Automation.- The Control of T Lymphocyte Activity May Involve Elements of Semiosis.- Digital Processing and Immuno-Regulatory Circuits.- Section VI. Self-Referential and Autonomous Nature of Immune System.- Observer, Immune System and Their Respective Objects (About Self — Non-Self Discrimination).- General Principles of Complex Biological Systems Operating in Immunology. Self-Response Might Define the Boundaries of the Developing Immune System.- Towards Cognitive Immunology: G.O.D. is Infinite.- Parasites and the Immune Response: Crossing the Signals.- Section VII. The Creation of Signs and the Language of Immune Interaction.- Grammars, Machines, and Immunoregulatory Cell Interactions. An Exercise in Immunosemiotics.- Is There a Unique Language in the Immunoregulatory System?.- Recognition of Syngeneic Forms of L-Chain V-Region Peptides by T Helper Cells Suggests that B Cell Antigen Receptors are Processed and Reutilized in Cognate T-B Interaction.- Section VIII. Cellular Connectivity and Suppression.- Regulatory T Cell Function, Antigen Recognition, and an Immunological Decision Point.- On I-J, a Network Centre Pole and AIDS.- Immune Suppression: An Integral Property of the Immune System?.- Section IX. Choices and Decisions.- Signs and Meaning in the Study of the Immune and Higher Nervous System.- Whither the Immune Response? Factors Directing the Response to Humoral or Cell-Mediated Immunity.- Immunoschismatics: Who is Guilty of Original Antigenic Sin?.- Epitypic-Idiotypic Dominance as an Evolutionary Answer to the Intercellular Communication Problem.

O autorze

Umberto Eco, geboren 1932 in Alessandria, lebte zuletzt in Mailand. Er studierte Pädagogik und Philosophie und promovierte 1954 an der Universität Turin. Anschließend arbeitete er beim Italienischen Fernsehen und war als freier Dozent für Ästhetik und visuelle Kommunikation in Turin, Mailand und Florenz tätig. Seit 1971 unterrichtet eer Semiotik in Bologna. Eco erhielt neben zahlreichen Auszeichnungen den "Premio Strega" (1981) und wurde u. a.1988 zum Ehrendoktor der Pariser Sorbonne ernannt.
Er verfasste zahlreiche Schriften zur Theorie und Praxis der Zeichen, der Literatur, der Kunst und nicht zuletzt der Ästhetik des Mittelalters. Seine Romane "Der Name der Rose" und "Das Foucaultsche Pendel" sind Welterfolge geworden.
2011 wurde Umberto Eco mit dem "Premio Pavese" ausgezeichnet und 2014 erhielt er den "Gutenberg-Preis" der Landeshauptstadt Mainz und der Internationalen Gutenberg-Gesellschaft. Er verstarb 2016.