The immune system is equal in complexity to the combined intricacies of the brain and nervous system. The success of the immune system in defending the body relies on a dynamic regulatory communications network consisting of millions and millions of cells. Organized into sets and subsets, these cells pass information back and forth like clouds of bees swarming around a hive. The result is a sensitive system of checks and balances that produces an immune response that is prompt, appropriate, effective and self-limiting. At the heart of the immune system is the ability to distinguish between self and non-self. When immune defenders encounter cells or organisms carrying foreign or non-self molecules, the immune troops move quickly to eliminate the invaders. Virtually every body cell carries distinctive molecules that identify it as self. The body's immune defenses do not normally attack tissues that carry a self marker. Rather, immune cells and other body cells coexist peaceably in a state known as self-tolerance. When a normally functioning immune system attacks a non-self molecule, the system has the ability to remember the specifics of the foreign body. Upon subsequent encounters with the same species of molecules, the immune system reacts accordingly. With the possible exception of antibodies passed during lactation, this so-called immune system memory is not inherited. Despite the occurrence of a virus in your family, your immune system must learn from experience with the many millions of distinctive non-self molecules in the sea of microbes in which we live. Learning necessitates producing the appropriate molecules and cells to match up with and counteract each non-self invader. Any substance capable of stimulating an immune response is called an antigen. Tissues or cells from another individual (except an identical twin, whose cells carry identical self-markers) act as antigens; because the immune system recognizes transplanted tissues as foreign, it rejects them. The body will even reject nourishing proteins unless they are first broken down by the digestive system into their primary, non-antigenic building blocks. An antigen announces its foreignness by means of intricate and characteristic shapes called epitopes, which stick out from its surface. Most antigens, even the simplest microbes, carry several different kinds of epitopes on their surface, some may even carry several hundred. Some epitopes will be more effective than others at stimulating an immune response. Only in abnormal situations does the immune system wrongly identify self as non-self and execute a misdirected immune attack. The result can be so-called autoimmune disease. The painful side effects of these diseases are caused by a person's immune system actually attacking itself.

【正确答案】 B

【答案解析】解析：细节题。本文第一句说，免疫系统的复杂性等于大脑与神经系统的combined intricacies(复杂性之总和)。[B]与此意一致。[A]中的no less…than相当于as much as or perhaps more(和……一样多，不少／亚于……)，与句意不符；[C]说免疫系统is enclosed by…cells(被……细胞包围着)，但第二句说通讯网络是由无数细胞consisting of(构成的)，两者显然不一致；[D]中的results in(造成……结果；导致)与文中的relies on(依靠)大相径庭。