Once upon a time, when I was an itty bitty grad student, I had an appointment with an immunology PI to ask to be involved in their research.
One of the first questions they asked me was, what&
#39;s inflammation?
"You want the layman&
#39;s answer or the real answer?"
"Both."
"The layman&
#39;s answer is that set of cellular and biochemical reactions involved with infections and their resolution."
"And the real answer?"
"There&
#39;s no such thing. &
#39;Inflammation&
#39; is the set of cellular and molecular biology that immunologists discovered before everyone else did. There isn&
#39;t a single molecule in the body that isn&
#39;t involved in a wide variety of functions, and there isn&
#39;t a single function -be it extracellular remodeling, monitoring of cells for expression of abnormal proteins, cell signaling, cell life cycle regulation, etc. - that doesn&
#39;t hook into a hundred different functions in a hundred different contexts. &
#39;Inflammation&
#39; refers to the lens of the person studying the thing, not the thing."
I got a happy smile and a welcome handshake with that answer.