For years, immunology researchers have paid
relatively little attention to this thuggish innate
immune system, basically thinking of it as a
crew of biochemical bouncers that pummel anything
able to penetrate the tiniest opening in a
living being’s skin or shell. They lavished their
attention, instead, on the more advanced adaptive
immune system, which can marshal antibodies
and other weaponry that identify and
then target an intruder with a specificity lacking
in the untamed innate system.