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Glite Dictionary
🦠 Foreign material 🧘 No permanent self
nonself

nonself

1 9.6
Material that the body's immune system sees as foreign and may attack
  • noun
  • Specialized
: no propio
  • At the heart of immune functioning is the ability of the organism to distinguish between self and nonself.
  • self and nonself

Examples

  • To effectively fight infections, the immune system must identify which cells are nonself and launch a defense against them.

  • At the heart of immune functioning is the ability of the organism to distinguish between self and nonself.

  • Normally, when the immune system encounters something within the body that is foreign (nonself), it attacks and eliminates the outsider.

Surface Forms

nonself singular
nonselfs plural

Morphology

nonself = self (transparent) = non + self

Formed by negation 'non-' + 'self' and in immunology denotes things not part of the organism, which is directly derivable from the parts.

Etymology

Nonself comes from the prefix non- meaning 'not' and self meaning 'one's own body', like in nonstop or myself. So in biology nonself means something 'not part of the body' or 'foreign', which is why the immune system treats it as an invader.