If the immune system serves as the critical gendarmerie keeping the animal and microbial cells together, then to obey the immune system is to become a citizen of the holobiont. To escape immune control is to become a pathogen or a cancer.

Scott Frederick Gilbert is an American evolutionary developmental biologist and historian of biology. He is the Howard A. Schneiderman Professor of Biology (emeritus) at Swarthmore College and a Finland Distinguished Professor (emeritus) at the University of Helsinki.

Filter

Sort