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Questions tagged [immunology]

The study of the immune system in organisms, primarily responsible for fighting infection.

The study of the immune system, the system primarily responsible for fighting infection in living organisms.

For a list of books covering this topic, see Modern immunology textbooks.

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How Do White Blood Cells Learn? Or Do They?

So I get the concept that a vaccine is a weakened form of a virus so that the body can "learn" to fight it and make a person immune to that disease, but how exactly does this learning take place? What learns? The white blood cells? Do they have…
CodeMonkey
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If all B cells are present at birth, why should the primary response to an infection take longer than the secondary response?

When learning about the immune response, my teacher mentioned that all the bodies B cells are present at birth, and there is one to counter every disease. But if this is the case, why should the primary response take a long time? As far as I know,…
J_mie6
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Why do dendritic cells have CD4/CD8 on their surface?

Why do dendritic cells have CD4 or CD8 antigens on their surface? What is their function without the presence of a T-cell receptor?
jul
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What cells would have the CD3 marker on them (other than T-cells)

Do you know of any peripheral blood mononuclear cells that would express any amount (beit low or high) of CD3 on their surface (other than T-cells)?
jul
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Do we have enough diversity of antibodies to overcome almost any antigen?

I always wonder about the capability of diversity of our antibodies. Do we have enough antibodies to fit to every kind of molecule? Wont't it be easier if our antibodies are like clay and can be molded to any form by antigens? Why to waste energy…
biogirl
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Conjugate secondary antibody

Why is the secondary antibody conjugated to the enzyme in ELISA, instead of the primary antibody? Wouldn't it be easier to conjugate the enzyme to the primary antibody?
JohnPhteven
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How is antibody production stopped?

Once clonal selection is done, B cells would start dividing and producing antibodies. So, after an antigen is eliminated, what stops the division of B cells and antibody production?
biogirl
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Why White Blood Cells (WBCs) do not react to foreign bodies like sperm?

Why do the white blood cells allow foreign bodies like sperm to exist inside body cavity without any reaction? White blood cells function is to fight against foreign bodies (from the text books).
danish kumar
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Question about the expression of MHC

Is it possible to express both the MHC class-1 and MHC class-2 both in one cell?
user5021
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Who would win in a fight: an amoeba or a leukocyte?

(sorry, I couldn't resist the rhyming, silly title) I find it facinating that humans can suffer from an amoeba infestation. Amoeba must reproduce far more slowly than bacteria. In size, they seem to be approximately the same size as the various…
user3934
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Why don't we form immunity to some infections?

I read another question, and its answers, about how vaccines work, but I don't see there, and and don't understand, why some infections can, seemingly, not be immunized against at all. For example, someone who gets the flu (or the flu vaccine) is…
msh210
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Do IgM and IgG differ for different infections?

I am not that much educated in the medicine and immunology fields. So I noticed that there are tests for IgM and IgG immunoglobulins for various infections. I was not able to google quickly if IgM for one type of infection differs from the one for…
Alexander Arendar
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Specificity of the immune system

We know that the adaptive immune system recognizes foreign particles when their proteins are expessed of the the surface of T-cells, complexed with MHCs. But MHCs present only short peptides of length 8-11 amino acids long. How is it that every…
Kunal24
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What's the advantage of autocrine signalling?

In the antibody-mediated immune response, when the helper T cell gets activated by the costimulus (IL-2 and TNF-α secreted by the APC) which in turn produces IL-2, IL-2 acts in an autocrine manner. I'm just wondering why does IL-2 have to be…
Miriam
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Plasma cells and memory cells

What decides whether an activated B cell will get converted to plasma cell or memory B cell? Is it necessary that out of a mitotic division one will convert to memory B cell and the other to plasma cell?
biogirl
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