Blogger’s Block

Very sorry for the silence lately, I just haven’t had any good ideas for topics. Although writing little fact pieces on different species are cool, there are plenty of books and blogs doing the same thing and it may be more productive to make nerve function understandable to a large audience. Anyway, this is a bit of an apology but also a DESPERATE PLEA for material. Honestly, ask me anything. Granted, if it’s a quick explanation, I may just answer in the comments, but YOU NEVER KNOW.

More on Video Game You

Now that I’ve had my rest and about a gallon of mango juice, I’ll continue on talking about Halo 4¾ : Immunecraft. But before I move onto the specialty classes of white blood cells, I forgot to mention a few base classes. Besides macrophages, other specialized white blood cells the are part of the nonspecific immune response include neutrophils, eosinophils, basophils and mast cells. Neutrophils engulf pathogens and infected cells like macrophages, but don’t keep any trophies after (they’re not APCs, antigen presenting cells). The other two ‘Phils and the mast cells release nonspecific toxins in the presence of invaders. So they’re your buddy with the flamethrower, that can maybe get too excited and maybe burn down more buildings than you’d like. But Flamethrower Carl’s enthusiasm does attract the attention of the other players; basophils and mast cells secrete histamine to dilate the capillaries and make them leak. The leakiness allows macrophages and neutrophils to reach a given infection site and, when signaled, the special forces can move in.

B Cells and T-cells are these special forces. Both are produced in the bone marrow, but the T-cells get upgrades by maturing in the thymus. These cells arrive when an antigen presenting macrophage activates a circulating helper T-cell. This is the “go” signal and starts a chain reaction of immune responses faster than you can think about saying “domino”. Helper T-cells divide and activate B-cells and cytotoxic T-cells which in turn start dividing, kicking ass and taking names (not in that order). Cytotoxic T-cells are your hit men with machine guns that can hone in on an enemy and riddle it full of holes (literally, they use enzymes to “pop” cells). They are great for attacking viruses in infected cells. B-cells are a bit more clever, they specialize into plasma cells which produce antibodies specific to the invader in question. Besides gassing out the enemy with antibodies, B-cells can specialize into memory B-cells in order to “record” the antibodies needed for a particular pathogen. Subesequent infections of the same pathogen are then fought off much faster. Finally, there is the underappreciated suppressor T-cell, a helper T-cell that gets out and reminds everyone (via chemical signals) that the immune system does not follow a scorched earth policy so PLEASE just tone it down guys, OK???

Probably the niftiest thing about this whole immune response/video game is that the B-cells and T-cells activated are activated because they are already specific to whatever is already infecting you. Your body can tell the FUTURE. Except it can’t. There are BILLIONS of B- and T-cells in your body, each with different surface receptors that can be activated by different antigens. So it’s a probability thing, like those monkeys on typewriters, but instead of Shakespeare, they come up with billions of cell surface receptors. Of those billions, your body can single out the exact one to save you from misery or even death.

 

Source

-. 2010. GRE Subject Test: Biology 5th Ed. Kaplan, New York.