If we imagine our immune system to be a police force for our bodies, then previous work has suggested that the Lymph nodes would be the best candidate structures within the body to act as police stations — the regions in which the immune response is organized. However, researchers now suggest that lymph nodes are not essential in the mouse in marshalling T-cells (a main immune foot soldier) to respond to a breach of the skin barrier. This result is both surprising in itself, and suggests a novel function for the liver as an alternate site for T-cell activation.