Solved cryptogram
Your defenses have to tell your own cells from everything else, and the sorting is not perfect.
Biology Facts, sourced to NIAID.
Solve it yourself
This fact is a cryptogram here: 77 letters over 20 different ones, graded medium.
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What it means
Every cell you own carries molecular identification, and immune cells that react to it are weeded out during training. The system is a compromise. Set it too permissive and infections walk through; set it too strict and it attacks the body it is defending, which is what an autoimmune disease is. Allergy is the same machinery misfiring at something harmless. Both are the price of a defense that has to learn what it has never seen.
The claim comes from NIAID.
- SourceNIAID
- CollectionBiology Facts
- Difficultymedium
- Length77 letters, 20 of them different
Nearby in the collection
The facts either side of this one.
- MedlinePluseasy, 71 letters
- MedlinePlus, National Library of Medicinemedium, 70 letters
- MedlinePlusmedium, 69 letters
- National Human Genome Research Institutemedium, 70 letters
About as hard as this one
Scored closest to it by the model behind our guide to solving cryptograms.
- NCBI Bookshelf: Molecular Biology of the Cellmedium, 75 letters
- National Eye Institutemedium, 73 letters
- NHLBImedium, 74 letters
- NCBI Bookshelf: The Cellmedium, 74 letters