Applying the uncertainty principle to immunology.

Abstract

“Predictions are very difficult, particularly about the future” –Niels Bohr 1885–1962 Immunologists have gone to extraordinary efforts to categorize immune cells according to inflexible taxonomic principles similar to those applied by Linnaeus to catalog animals and plant. Whether circulating in the blood or infiltrating tissues, immune cells are assigned to individual taxa according to highly differentiated and inflexible properties carried through cell-to-cell contact or the production of soluble factors.