The adaptive immune system creates an imprint of an invader's shape to generate specific antibodies for future recognition and immunity.

“So, the adaptive immune system has this incredible ability to show up at the site of invasion or infection or inflammation. It's called there by various cues, including the cytokines that we talked about earlier. And what it does is it actually attaches to and creates a sort of an imprint of the shape of whatever invader happens to be there. So if that particular invading bacteria or virus has a contour that's kind of rippled or kind of spiky or whatever shape it happens to have, it creates an imprint of that. And then, using that imprint in concert with some other cells, creates antibodies that are specific to recognize that invader should the body ever have that invader inside of it again.”