 The shift from a focus on the insularity and autonomy of the organism to its integration within a complex consortium of species carries a contrasting holistic orientation to the reductivism characterizing the molecularization of immunology (Ulvestad 2007: 65–67). The theoretical implications and practical methodological re-direction indicate a re-alignment of research strategies for immunology and, more generally, an important contribution to the larger debates concerning the character and feasibility of non-reductionist research programs in the life sciences (Kitcher 1984; Sarkar 1998; Wimsatt 2007). Initially focused on the question of the relationship between classical genetics and molecular biology, these debates have turned to explanatory strategies in distinct biological subdisciplines, such as neuroscience (Craver 2005), ecology (Dupré 1993), systems biology (Wolkenhauer and Green 2013) and developmental biology (Love 2008; see the entry on  developmental biology).  Still awaiting broader recognition as an exemplar of explanatory practices in life sciences, immunology already serves as a case study to approach the problem of reduction and holism in biology and medicine.