Immune System: Research and Quiz

We just recently finished working with the endocrine and muscular syste, reviewing functions of hormones and muscles and how they interact together. We are now beginning to look deeper into the immune system and its functions. 
 
An important defense against disease in vertebrate animals is the ability to eliminate, inactivate, or destroy foreign substances and organisms. Explain how the immune system achieves all of the following.

1. Provides an immediate nonspecific immune response
2. Activates T and B cells in response to an infection
3. Responds to a later exposure to the same infectious agent
4. Distinguishes self from non-self 

 
  1. The immune system is the defense mechanism of the body. It uses various types of preventions and barriers in order to prevent foreign pathogens from entering and harming the body. There are various types of prevention methods that the body uses in order to achieve the protection necessary. The body utilizes things such as skin, tears, mucus, etc. Besides the physical and more obvious types of protection methods, the immune system can use chemicals in the body in order to aid this prevention. Lysosome, which is found in tears and mucus, is one of these chemical prevention methods that is used to kill pathogens that could cause harm.

2. Surface immunoglobin serves as a B-cell antigen receptor that has two roles in B-cell activation. First, there are signals that are transmitted into the insides of the cell where it binds antigen. Then, the B-cell antigen rreceptor delivers the antigen to intracellular sites. Some microbial antigens can activate B cells without the assistance of a T-cell. The alarmed T-cell is usually what begins this process when the antigen is bound by the surface immunglobulin and, once internalized, is returned to the surface.



3.  When an infection occurs, certain B and T cells become a special type of memory cell which assists in remembering and being able to destroy familiar pathogens that have previously entered the body and have been harmful. Because these memory cells already have a prior knowledge of the threatening pathogen, it is able to locate, recognize, and attack it much more faster and more efficiently.

4.  Every body cells has specific, unique molecules that allows it to be able to identify itself. The immune system does not typically attack tissues that carry these special markers that identify them as belonging in the body's normal system. When immune cells that are meant for defending the body's systems encounter any type of organism or cell that has a foreign type of marker, the cells are alerted and move quickly in order to eliminate the harmful pathogen and protect the body.