A wondrous process occurs when a B lymphocyte, displaying the right receptor, meets a foreign antigen. As Lewis Thomas wrote in his book The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974): “When the connection is made, and a particular lymphocyte with a particular receptor is brought into the presence of the particular antigen, one of the greatest small spectacles in nature occurs. The cell enlarges, begins making new DNA at a great rate and turns into what is termed, appropriately, a blast. It then begins dividing, replicating itself into a new colony of identical cells all labeled with
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