
The Anglerfish Deleted Its Immune System to Fuse with Its Mate - MindGods
https://www.wired.com/story/the-anglerfish-deleted-its-immune-system-to-fuse-with-its-mate/
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DoreenMichele
Well, this is cool and all, but:

 _Boehm believes that the anglerfish somehow boosts its own innate immune
system to make up for the loss of the adaptive system._

So it hasn't actually deleted its entire immune system, like the title
suggests. Just some part of it.

I mean I hated the title on sight because I don't even know what "the immune
system" is. And I've thought about this a whole lot and written a few rambly
blog posts about it (probably not currently online).

If you talk about "your circulatory system," you can name specific organs,
etc. Same is true if you talk about "your nervous system" or "your digestive
tract."

The same is not true of "your immune system."

Your skin is part of your immune system. It helps keep out invaders.

Your saliva and stomach acid are part of your immune system. They help kill
microbes in your food to help make it safe for you to eat.

The mucus lining all mucus membranes in your body, including your respiratory
tract and digestive tract, is part of your immune system. It helps keep out
invaders.

So while it's fascinating that this fish has apparently deleted some important
pieces of its immune system, I don't think it is accurate to say "it deleted
its immune system" (in its entirety) because the odds are good it still has
many systems that help protect it from invading microbes, starting with some
kind of skin/scales/hide and including some kind of digestive function.

It's a really interesting piece, but the immune system isn't any one thing.
It's everything the body does to try to keep out invaders and white blood
cells are just one part of that.

~~~
cjhveal
I do think the title could have been made more accurate by weakening it, but
I'm curious linguistically why the title as is evokes hatred. Would you feel
it similarly misleading if a headline said "individual crashes their car" but
it turned out they had another conveyance and could still drive? Is it that
the title leaves open the ambiguity that it could be referring to one of its
immune systems versus the entire immune system? Or is it to do with the
semantics of the verb deleted that implies a completeness of removal? I
suppose the closest parallel I can think of is "Big bank deletes its security
system", which would be confusing, but I wouldn't be led to believe that they
removed all their doors and windows too, even if they are technically
components of physical security, and I wouldn't really expect that to be
disambiguated in the headline.

To me personally, the most characteristic part of the immune system is the
adaptive portion of it, and when I hear that an organism's immune system is
deleted, the first thing that comes to mind is that it doesn't produce or
recognize antibodies, rather than that it has deleted its skin and mucosa, so
this doesn't really feel that dishonest compared to other forms of click-bait.
Not perfectly accurate, but if it had said "deleted some of its immune
system", I probably wouldn't have assumed that it was missing its entire
adaptive immune system. To me, it feels like the pragmatics dulls the semantic
ambiguity to a pretty tolerable level, especially for popular science
reporting. Maybe I'm missing the point and the issue at hand is how we talk
about the immune system in general. Hope this doesn't come off as attacking,
I'm interested in understanding the semantic point you're presenting.

~~~
DoreenMichele
I have a genetic disorder. This causes me to have a compromised immune system.

This is a personal sore point for me because of that. Trying to figure out
"What in heck does that even mean in practical terms????!!!" has been a years-
long process.

My condition is a dread disease and it's torture. Figuring out how to
effectively manage it has been complicated by the misleading way we frame
immune function. So I wish the world wouldn't do that to begin with.

~~~
cjhveal
Apologies if I've touched on a sore topic. How can I help to frame the immune
system in a less misleading way?

~~~
DoreenMichele
I don't know.

I've developed mental models for what is pertinent to my needs, but I have no
idea how to talk with other people about this stuff.

My condition involves misprocessing of dietary fats. It took me ages to
realize this was one of the ways my immune system was compromised: Bone marrow
is fatty and is where white blood cells get produced.

Avoiding fats I don't process well has dramatically reduced my symptoms
overall, especially chronic inflammation. But getting enough of the right fats
has proven critical to my health and well-being. Loading up on butter and
other fats I tolerate well is the quickest way to stop bone pain and I'm
convinced it's because that pain is due to stress on my immune system.

Fasting has been beneficial and it took me years and years to realize that and
to come up with mental models for why on Earth fasting would boost immune
function.

Extreme aquagenic wrinkling is a known tendency for my condition. As I've
grown healthier, I'm less prone to that.

It took me years and years to realize this suggests my skin is abnormally
spongy and soaks things up instead of keeping things out and this is a really
important way my immune function is compromised. So I have gotten a lot
pickier about what I am willing to touch because my skin fails to do its job.

It's like we don't tell people that the body's equivalent of windows and doors
are even part of the equation. We act like the cameras and alarms are all
there is to it and never talk about "If something is really whackadoodle, it's
like all the windows are broken and none of the doors have locks, so it almost
doesn't matter if the cameras and alarms work. You're screwed anyway."

~~~
darkerside
Just jumping in here, but all I'd suggest is that other biological systems may
be similarly complex in ways that don't necessarily impact you. And if we
stopped to disambiguate every nuance, we'd never be able to have fruitful
conversations.

That said, I understand why this particular nuance is important to you and I
think it's a helpful distinction to make that many may have not considered, so
I appreciate you making it.

~~~
DoreenMichele
This is not just me being neurotic and over sensitive. I have tried to look up
"the immune system" and found definitions indicating "it's how the body
protects itself from invaders" and failing to list specific organs in the
body.

I have also made remarks trying to elucidate the lymphatic system and how it
works. The circulatory system pumps it for half the equation. Most people seem
to have no idea how the lymphatic system works either.

------
rootsudo
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anDIlMVgNwk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anDIlMVgNwk)

~~~
soperj
Awesome video. Thanks for sharing. Puts the news in context.

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Falling3
Anglerfish have always been the animal that top the charts for me in disgust,
terror, and fascination. Really cool to learn more about the way they live.

~~~
dvtrn
They are absolutely terrifying to me on a visual level but holy crap are they
cool creatures

~~~
Falling3
Not only the aesthetics, but also the idea that individuals of one sex
dissolve into their mates bodies. It's all kind of nightmarish.

~~~
dvtrn
No no, that’s the cool part haha

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chiefalchemist
Can someone explain this in the context of evolution? How is this "mating
ritual" an adaptive advantage? How does going from two of the species to one a
benefit? I understand they're mating, but that's not immediate.

~~~
koolba
In the dark depths where the anglerfish lives, it’s rare to encounter a mate.
Evolving a mechanism to allow the male to latch onto the female well in
advance of mating ensures the female has access to sperm when it’s ready to
produce eggs. Otherwise it’d be a gamble to randomly encounter a male during
the short window when mating is viable.

For the male, minimizing its size and lowering its immune system allows it to
more efficiently live off the females for the long period of time until it
gets to mate.

~~~
wruza
Given that it was not designed, but evolved gradually, it is easy to deduce
that recently males were just floating around, sticking, and then feeding off
female's blood by biting into their body. They basically be born and eat women
like parasites, but with a reproduction feedback. Remember that when someone
calls life a beauty again.

~~~
programmarchy
It's odd that the Darwinian phrase "survival of the fittest" conjures up
images of strength and beauty, but parasitism is a surprisingly common and
highly effective fitness strategy.

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lend000
If I am understanding correctly, a virus that targeted any receptors within
the Anglerfish would be fatal 100% of the time?

~~~
est31
They still have an innate immune system, and the article mentions researchers
suspecting that the innate immune system is stronger in anglerfish.

~~~
lend000
Can an innate immune system do anything about a virus that has already entered
the organism? Or perhaps they just have such a strong outer layer and are so
dispersed that viruses rarely evolve to target them, and quickly die out if
they do.

~~~
est31
There has been an evolutionary arms race between viruses and potential host
cells where host cells constantly figure out new defenses and viruses figure
out ways to counter them. The adaptive immune system is a very sophisticated
defense mechanism, but not the only one available. E.g. check out Toll like
receptors [1], PKR [2], APOBEC3, etc.

Viruses of course have to counter these defenses somehow, but it still slows
them down, and if only because they require additional RNA/DNA to encode it
which can mutate and render subsequent viruses inactive.

There is a great lecture on the topic of intrinsic and innate defenses against
viruses by Vincent Racianello [3].

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toll-
like_receptor#Summary_of_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toll-
like_receptor#Summary_of_known_mammalian_TLRs)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_kinase_R](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_kinase_R)

[3]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMNbrTlV4_w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMNbrTlV4_w)

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surround
Mirror: [https://archive.is/fRNhJ](https://archive.is/fRNhJ)

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wruza
_hopes that the finding will perhaps lead to a new understanding of
immunosuppression in humans, and perhaps better treatments for organ
transplant recipients in the future_

Honestly that always sounds like a little stretch to me, like porting kqueue
user code to iocp through cygwin under wine and expecting the same io
performance.

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kelsolaar
Absolutely fascinating! Is there any other animal known to have evolved like
that?

~~~
nn3
There is an insect species with live birth, where the males never get born,
but mate with their sisters while still in the mother's body. The sisters then
get born already pregnant.

I guess they beat the anglerfish in weirdness.

