Questions tagged [immunology]
The study of the immune system in organisms, primarily responsible for fighting infection.
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Is there a difference between adult onset and child onset atopic dermatitis and what is the role of the skin microbiome in the condition?
I am a novice in the field of skin microbiology. I am looking to learn about the skin microbiome and its role in atopic dermatitis. As of right now, based on my readings that the biodiversity of ...
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Can macrophages phagocytose viruses directly?
I've been reading that Macrophages, members of the innate immune system, can actively track bacteria and protozoa to devour and destroy them. In the same way, can macrophages devour free viruses, in ...
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How to correct the different (background) fluorescence for different cell types?
I am differentiating mouse bone marrow macrophages in vitro. However, I found that the differentiated macrophages have higher background fluorescence (the unstained sample) in all channels, which ...
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what is the main difference of immune response between immune deficiency people and normal people?
The only thing I know about the main difference between immune deficiency and normal people is that for immune deficiency people there will be less adaptive immune response.
Let's take the difference ...
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Conjugate vaccines in the context of the original antigenic sin and antibody feedback inhibition
How come we can get an antibody response against a polysaccharide bound to a carrier protein, that we have antibodies towards, when antibody feedback inhibition exists?
If we have antibodies against ...
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What's the exact mechanism of oral tolerance? [closed]
I have mainly two matters of confusion need to be clarified.
First question:
The immune system does not necessarily kill everything hat has PAMPS, the bacteria living in the gut, have PAMPS (Pathogen-...
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What's the procedure of the antigen recognition by the B cells in a clear way?
Before presenting my confusion, I really sincerely thank everyone for any advices or clarifying , every single comment is helpful. And my english writing skill is still very bad, Just ask anything ...
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immunotherapy - how would the inhibitor detect
It's a known fact that if PD-L1 happens to be on cancer cells, it will signall off to the T-cell's receptor(PD-1) to turn off its activation, resulting in a fact ...
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cancer cell - antigen presenting cell
We all know that if normal cell contains virus inside it, normal cell has mechanism inside it that can detect that it has abnormality inside(virus) and what it will do is present the virus's protein(...
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immune system - how does adaptive work without innate?
The way I understood immune system is that:
phagocytes detect viruses and present it on their surface and become antigen presenting cells.
Then, T-helper cells try to bind to these phagocytes that ...
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how do phagocytes receptors work now and in the past?
As we know, phagocytes have receptors on their cell that are used to detect pathogens which they bind to and engulf them. That seems easy.
Though, I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact how the ...
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Can two very similar MHC class I molecules present the same virus peptide to a cell?
Can two very similar MHC class I molecules, only differing at a few amino acids in the alpha1 domain, present the same virus peptide to a cell?
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How bacteria respond to toxic viral proteins?
The lysis-lysogeny state of bacteriophage lambda is well known. Under certain conditions, the phage will enter the lysogenic state after infection of a bacterium. Then, after a while, the phage ...
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How does the body avoid making an immune response to self-antigens?
The body contains antigen-detecting and presenting cells (APCs) including leukocytes and cytokines each having their characteristic HLA genes consisting of different recognition sites that detect the ...
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PCR: From transgene/microgram to cell concentration
I am doing research on CAR T-cell kinetics. The measurement of CAR T-cell concentrations across time is normally carried out with qPCR (see here, Fig. 1). These concentrations are generally reported ...
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Exhaustion of 'memory' CD8 T cells
I've been reading literature on the exhaustion of cytotoxic CD8 T cells. In many of the papers I read, the authors aim to delineate molecular mechanisms that differ between exhausted and memory ...
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CDRs and antigen-binding sites [duplicate]
Are complementarity determining regions (CDRs) not the same thing as antigen-binding sites?
If not, what is the difference?
An old exam question states:
"Clarify how CDRs are related to the ...
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Role of the CD3 proteins and ζ chain
Could someone please explain which of the following is correct and why?
The role of the CD3 proteins and ζ chain on the surface of the cell is to:
a) transduce signals to the interior of the T cell
b)...
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Heat shock proteins in T cells of tumor microenvironment
Analyzing human tumor single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data, I found abundant expression of Heat shock protein (HSP) family genes in T cells. My literature review on "HSPs in T cells" ...
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Does antigen removal occur in the red pulp of spleen?
I know there are macrophages in red pulp as well but does the red pulp have antigen removal with mechanisms such as complement and antibodies.
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snRNAseq vs scRNAseq in cancer
my question is about phagocytosis as response to cancer. It is known that cytotoxic T cell may kill a cancer cell and sends cytokines to phagocytes like macrophage or dendritic cell to engulf and ...
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What causes Erythroblastosis fetalis?
So this is what I understood about the disease by researching about it
When a Rh-ve mother has a Rh+ve baby in her womb,
The placenta prevents mixing of fetal and maternal blood preventing antigen ...
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How long is the typical peptide sequence recognized by a T-cell?
A naive T-cell recognizes either a certain sequence of amino-acids (even if that sequence occurs as a part of a longer sequence of amino-acids(*)), or a small set(**) thereof. Only T-cells that do ...
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Can typed-switched B cells recognize the tertiary structure of antigens?
As T helper cells are responsible for isotype switching but Th cells are MHC class 2 restricted and MHC only presents denatured peptides (up to 30 residues, no folding), does that imply that only IgM ...
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Disease-causing allele frequency and modern medicine
I was thinking about what the impact modern medicine might have on human evolution based on a couple assumptions.
If we assume that:
modern medicine has massively cushioned the selection pressure ...
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How does the exposure time affect the potencies of antibodies?
The potency of neutralizing antibodies is commonly represented by their binding affinity for their targets. However, binding affinity is based on the dissociation constants at equilibrium, which can’t ...
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Can the Monkeypox virus be spread by mosquitoes?
I am wondering if the Monkeypox virus could be spread by mosquitoes since it is part of the Smallpox family.
While doing some online research on this possibility, I came across this abstract taken ...
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Does HIV erase the immune memory?
It’s said that HIV selectively infects and kills CD4+ T cells, which disables the adaptive immunity because both CD8+ T cells and B cells need CD4+ T cells to activate them. However, once activated, ...
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Are individual auto-reactive 'lymphocytes' or auto-reactive 'clones' generated in the central lymphoid organs?
Clonal deletion is a well-known mechanism of immune central tolerance. But individual lymphocytes or lymphocyte clones are subjected to apoptosis? If clones, then what is the reason to allow mitosis ...
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If RBCs don't have MHC I, why don't NK cells kill them?
As mentioned in textbooks,
All nucleated cells have MHC class I molecules on the cell surface.
RBCs have no nucleus, therefore no MHC I
NK cells kill cells with deficiency in MHC I presentation
Then ...
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Thymus & T-Cell Generation and Maturity
I am a beginner in immune system. I am trying to understand the connection between T-Cell and Thymus as person ages.
It is clear from Guyton & Hall that till teenage the T-cell from bone marrow ...
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Vero cells and Influenza
I am currently reading a paper regarding Influenza. In the paper they describe a mutant and a WT, and the differences in replication. They grow the two strains in Vero cells (kidney epithelial cells). ...
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What does genetic diversity in one species have to do with survival rate when an epidemic spreads?
I was studying about genes, and soon remembered that the more diverse the genetics of one species, the less the chance of the species to go extinct from natural disaster.
One instance was an epidemic ...
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Does Herpes Simplex Virus induce antibodies which last a lifetime?
Herpes simplex virus (HSV-1) is a virus which produces both lytic and latent infection. In the latter case it persists in a quiescent form in the neural ganglia for the lifetime of its host.
My ...
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Why doesn't repeated Mantaux testing for Mycobacterium tuberculosis cause an immune response?
I have never had TB but have had multiple TB tests for work. All negative. If you are introducing TB antigen with each test, why isn't a memory of that formed by the adaptive immune system?
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Antigen transfer from baby to mother
When considering immunity in babies, the main mechanism that supports their undeveloped immune system is the transfer of antibodies from mother to baby via breastfeeding.
Case #1: both baby and mother ...
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Why don't T-Cells that correspond to certain viruses damage our cells? [closed]
I am studying immunology, and I am facing a problem.
The antibodies that B-Cells produce attack the viruses, but won't they also attack our cells that need to use the receptors on other cells?
When I ...
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Rationale for helper T cells?
If my understanding is correct, helper T cells have two main functions:
stimulating macrophages at the site of infection
activating B cells and helping them undergo somatic hypermutation
What ...
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What protein(s) serve as the control antigen in Covid lateral flow tests? [duplicate]
Having recently been obliged to take a lateral flow test for Covid in order to fly from the UK, I idly wondered:
What is the control antigen for Covid lateral flow tests?
as (fortunately) that was ...
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Why there is swelling when skin doesn't break visibly? [closed]
I had read that swelling occurs as result of blood vessels pouring watery fluid in the affected area to help in fighting the incoming pathogens, when we our skin is cut open. However sometimes like ...
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Why do immunoglobulin heavy chain genes sit next to the telomere?
I just noticed that IGH genes are the last group of genes at the end of Chromosome 14.
Is there a reason / selection pressure to explain why that is?
Below is a snapshot of the UCSC genome browser. As ...
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Does specific immunity affect the incubation period of viruses?
My interest was inspired by the observed variation in incubation times for different strains of Covid-19, however I ask the question in the broader sense as it seems hard to find an answer in general.
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What is the significance of an adjuvant to traffic vaccine antigen directly to draining lymph nodes without diffusing into the systemic circulation?
I found the following sentence in the this paper- Safety and immunogenicity of an inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, BBV152: a double-blind, randomised, phase 1 trial
An imidazoquinoline molecule, which ...
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How do the anti-D antibodies help prevent Hemolytic Disease of the Newborn? And why do they not act like the maternal antibodies?
I understand that this question has been asked a few times in the past, but the answers there didn't really explain to me why the Anti-D antibodies we introduce are able to prevent the hemolysis of ...
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How much of TLR 7 agonist is safe for human beings, as it is both linked to development of autoimmune diseases but is also used as Vaccine adjuvant?
This question is motivated by the fact that TLR 7 agonists have been linked to development and acceleration of Lupus-like disease both in animals and human beings. But at the same time, TLR 7 agonist ...
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Why are scientists saying that the Omicron COVID-19 variant is a reason to get a booster?
I was watching Vox’s video, Big questions about the Covid booster shot, answered, which references the New York Times article Omicron Prompts Swift Reconsideration of Boosters Among Scientists.
In ...
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Do spike-protein-based vaccines undermine the DNA repair system?
I ain't no biologist, but I came across a paper recently and tried to understand it:
SARS–CoV–2 Spike Impairs DNA Damage Repair and Inhibits V(D)J Recombination In Vitro
My question: Is it a correct ...
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Could Sars-CoV-2 vaccines make the immune response less effective against new variants?
Some viral diseases (e.g. influenza and dengue fever) are thought to exhibit original antigenic sin.
The immune system remembers viruses that it has been previously exposed to, allowing the body to ...
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What animal has the strongest immune system?
I'm wondering what animal has the strongest immune system. It can be defined as the most evolved immune system or the immune system that can eliminate or tolerate most number of (different) viruses/...
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Can blood transfusion help to fight cancer cell?
First of all, I'm not a biology student or have sufficient knowledge of biology so I apologize if this question appears silly. Let's say patient A has cancer cells and a healthy person B has the same ...
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