The thymus trains T cells like an AI model to avoid attacking the body

The thymus trains T cells like an AI model to avoid attacking the body

The immune system may learn not to attack the body by using a small but representative sample of the body’s own protein fragments. T cells can recognize groups of similar fragments, so they do not need to see every possible target during training. The model may help explain why failures in this training process can lead to autoimmune disease. The thymus gives young T cells a test they cannot possibly study for in full. Each cell sees only a frac…