If the 'adaptive' immune system can recognize a significant portion of the pathogenic universe to which the 'innate' immune system is blind, then. . .

Abstract

The 'adaptive' immune repertoire functionally recognizes pathogens (and their toxic products) that the 'innate' defense system misses. This requires that the self-nonself discrimination and the regulation of effector output be dependent primarily on somatic learning mechanisms (i.e. on the somatically generated, large, random 'adaptive' immune paratopes repertoire).