The<unk>  is a theory of how the adaptive<unk>  system works, that has been developed since 1974 mainly by Niels Jerne and Geoffrey W. Hoffmann. The theory states that the<unk>  system is an interacting<unk>  of lymphocytes and molecules that have variable (V) regions. These V regions bind not only to things that are foreign to the vertebrate, but also to other V regions within the system. The<unk>  system is therefore seen as a<unk> , with the components connected to each other by V-V interactions. It has been suggested that the phenomena that the theory describes in terms of<unk> s are also explained by clonal selection theory. The scope of the symmetrical<unk>  theory developed by Hoffmann includes the phenomena of low dose and high dose tolerance, first reported for a single antigen by Avrion Mitchison, and confirmed by Geoffrey Shellam and Sir Gustav Nossal, the helper and suppressor roles of T cells, the role of non-specific accessory cells in<unk>  responses, and the very important phenomenon called I-J. Jerne was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology in 1984 partly for his work towards the clonal selection theory, as well as his proposal of the<unk><unk>  concept. The<unk>  has also inspired a subfield of optimization algorithms similar to artificial neural<unk> s.
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