Innate immunity.

• The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Bruce Beutler at the Scripps Research Institute in California, Jules Hoffmann at the French National Center for Scientific Research and Ralph Steinman at The Rockefeller University in New York City. Beutler and Hoffman helped to elucidate innate immunity, the non-specific array of initial responses by the body’s immune system that can recognize invading microorganisms as being foreign and try to destroy them.