Nah Nah I'm Not Dying Now... Immune Systems Are Natural Killers!

Sex and not dying - that is what Biology is all about

While the sex part will grant you a little bit sexier, not dying is also fantastic, something that I really like to do every single day. I personally like not to die in any way whatsoever. That is why I don't engage in fights, I don't play tricky games on the main roads; in short, I just don't want to die. I’d choose having sex anytime.

Somehow, my body can handle the little devils on my hand, in my food, anywhere I am. And you know what, I do not need to worry about dying because of this team of microscopic assassins living inside my body- my immune system.

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Everyone knows the work they do by the trail of death they leave behind. Plus being the most disgusting example, the work that these guys do is pretty hard chores and they do not only identify incoming enemies, they eliminate them. Not just that, they keep files of them in case they want to come back.

I do not want to freak you out but you and I are covered in Pathogens right now and you really cannot blame them if you want to get busy in your action. Your warm, high energy, nutrient filled salty water reaction. Of I pretty much think about these guys and the majority of organisms inside you actually make your life more complete.

There are some less helpful viruses and organisms from here and now I refer to them as Pathogens that will want to turn your body into a factory that for producing their children.

We have two ways of doing it:

• Innate or nonspecific immunity that responds to all kind of pathogens the same way and very quickly whether your body has seen that pathogen before or not.
• Acquired or adopted immunity which develops more slowly and which requires your body to learn the while and ways of the pathogens before it defeats them.

Every animal has an Innate Immune System but only the vertebrate animals have the Acquired kind. You were born with your Innate Immune system and the second you find your way out of the protective environment of your mum and into this very disgusting world, that system had been protecting you.

The thing about Innate Immune System is that it does not care of what it is killing. It does not concern itself to know whether it is bacteria or it is virus or fungus, its job is to keep the enemies from getting in. Once it senses an enemy, it just sneaks behind and breaks its neck and the enemy just dies.

The first line of defense

The first line of defense in getting these enemies out are the Skin and the Mucous Membrane. The Skin has so many external functions like keeping your organs, but its primary purpose that is easy to forget is to keep things out. It is oily and kind of acidic and really not easy to penetrate and you rock your world with this, but we cannot forget that your digestive track is also there. Oh! What is stinky over here!

Remember that said digestive track is basically built around a tube. The inside of that tube is exposed to as much weird stuffs as the outside is. So, your body treats the digestive line like the front line of this war and just one of the reasons your stomach takes no prisoners with the whole stomach acid situation.

We have also got Mucous Membrane providing other barrier to microbes trying to sneak in. Mucous Membranes line all your internal surfaces that are exposed to the outside like your lungs, and inside of your nose as well as some other parts of your body like inside of your mouth, your eyelids and your sex organs. Ouch! I mentioned sex again.

Mucous Membranes unsurprisingly produce mucus which is viscous fluid, oh I know you have heard of it, and it traps microbes and helps slip them away. That is why illness is so often associated with this inspiring amount of gulp.

The Second line of defense

Your second line of defense is your Inflammatory Response. These are specialized set of cells in your connected tissue called Mast Cells that constantly search for suspicious objects, usually unknown proteins, and then release signaling molecules like Histamine when they find them. Histamine makes your body inflammable which allows a whole bunch of fluid to flow to the affected area and that is what causes inflammation. But is also bring a crap tone of white blood cells, the infection fighters to go out and send off whatever it is that is trying to make its way in.

This is great if you are going to spend time with your towel and get bunch of viruses in your face. But sometimes something gets in that is not actually dangerous like durst, peanuts and your immune system triggers a response anyway even though it is not a big deal. This is what we call an Allergic Reaction and you know what those are like, with this swelling, redness, itching, etc and in a case of may be a little death. That is why we take the Antihistamines to suppress the Histamine triggers and our Immune system stops freaking out about nothing. I mean about you know, something that is not a big deal. That is why you must always tell people when there are peanuts in your cookies.

Leukocytes

Most of the Immune System activities that happen inside your body fortress is done by White Blood Cells or Leukocytes. Leukocytes are awesome for lots of reasons but one reason is that they have got full of the IP access to any of anywhere in the body that they want to go. But the exception is the Central Nervous System, the brain and the Spinal Cord which are obvious reasons - super high security areas.

Leukocytes can move through the circulatory system and when they get to the place where they are needed, they basically send the signal to the capillary to open a gap between cells, and then it oozes through that gap to the site of the infection. This is called.. (get ready for it...) *Diapedesis from the Greek for oozing through.

Now there are different kinds of Leukocytes, like different branches of girlfriends out there (for those of us that enjoy life with so many girls). The kind specific to the Innate Immune System is called Phagocytes. More Greek this time as Phago means eating, that is digest any cells that ingest microorganism through the process of Phagocytosis. Phagocytes are practically cool. They chase down the invading cells, grab them and then completely engulf them. And some like this one called Neutrophils will run the bloodstream and quickly get to where the action is. Once the Neutrophils kill invading microbes, they basically slow off and die. Dead Neutrophils collect together into what we call Pus.

Macrophages

The biggest and the baddest of Phagocytes are Macrophages. The big idiots which do not generally travel a lot but instead hang out like bodyguards in various organs. Not only do they kill outside invaders, they can also detect it when one of your cells has gone rogue and kill them. And they unlike the Neutrophils do not die once they have killed the bacteria; they can eat up to hundred before they die... Big idiots!

Natural Killer Cells

A lot of stuff goes on in your Immune System. Some the most gruesome stuff is done by a kind of cell called Natural Killer Cells. More than just the great name, also the only Phagocytes in Innate Immune System that destroys other human cells. When the cells are healthy, they have a special protein on their surface called MHT1. Where MHT means Major Histocompatibility Complex. But when your cells are infected, say with virus, they stop producing that protein. They are natural killers. Always going around checking up on each of your cells and when they find one that is not normal, they take AK47 and then load. Well, you know what happens next. And in case you don't, ask @samminator.

Dendritic Cells

These are the type of Phagocytes that hang out on the surface of much of your body, come in contact with the environment, in your nose, on your skin, in your stomach, in intestines. They eat up pathogens and then carry information about them back to the lymph nodes where it passes intelligence about what is going on in war front to the Acquired Immune System.

The activities of these cells give them the chance to transfer from Inmate Immune System to the Acquired Immune System which is going to make things a little more complicated. The Acquired Immune System has to learn as much as it can about every pathogen it interacts with, stores that information and then uses it to erect defenses against them.

Antigens

You get to build your Acquired Immune System immediately after you are born. Obviously, bacteria and other stuff, not just the good bacteria that helps your gut but also hunts for the ones that your body learns from and then stores information about them. Thus, they keep an eye out for any force or toxin or virus or bacteria, even parts of the body that get associated with the bad guys. We call these Antigens - a word that comes from Antibody Generator. An Antigen is any part of your body that causes the Immune System to ideal pathogens and then create an antibodies against it.

Antibodies are not cells, they are highly specialize proteins produced by B cells to recognize intruders. Antibodies cannot kill invaders themselves. They are just a coat of proteins after all. The best thing they can do by themselves is just to swarm all over invader making it harder for it to move but more often, antibodies serve as tags attaching themselves to these scumbags while releasing chemical signals to nearby Phagocytes alerting them that it is dinner time. And you know what these Phagocytes would do, they turn invaders to pizza.

Lymphocytes

The Acquired Immune System has its own type of White Blood Cells, not Phagocytes which go after everything that looks catchy, but Lymphocytes which go after specific things they already know about.

The major type of Lymphocytes are T Cellswhich form in your bone marrow and then migrate to their place behind your chest bones. Then we have the B Cells which originate and mature in your bone marrow. What T and B actually stand for is a long story but to help you to remember, T stands for Thymus while B is Bone Marrow.

We have two different types of Lymphocytes because our bodies have two different types of Acquired Immunity. The Cell-mediated Response which is for when the cells are already infected and Humoral Response which is when the infection is just in the humus, the body's fluid, not in the cells.

Cell-mediated Response

Now let us look at the Cell-mediated Response, this process mainly involves T Cells and there are quite a number of different type of them. Helper T Cells have a cute name but what they do is to call the shot for the whole Immune System. Although they cannot kill pathogens themselves, they activate and direct the cells that can. Helper T Cells get their information from other Immune cells that have cracking skills. Say for instance, a Microphage finds pathogen and destroys it. After the deed has been done, they have the ability to eat up protein from their invaders and put a bit of that Antigen on their membrane surface.

Antigen Presentation

We have this because the cell is presenting Antigens. A Helper T Cell can detect when this happens and comes over to present itself to the presented Antigen. The two cells talk to each other, chemically of course. The Antigen present himself produces this chemical called Interleukin 1 which basically tells the Helper T Cell:

Ehm boss, I found this guy here and I broke his neck and so the stuff just gutted over my cell wall.

The Helper T Cell gives it a look and then releases this chemical called Interleukin 2 which is like an alarm that alerts all the relevant guys in the area:

Hey! There are problems here. We've got a problem over here in sector 15!

These alarms activate a couple of things at ones. So the Helper T Cells start making copies, copies of itself, most of which differentiate into Effector T Cells which travels around secretly and signaling proteins that can get other nearby Lymphocytes to take action.

Most of the best of them become Memory T Cells. They are the one that keep record of intruders and provide future immunity against them. And now to the saddest story of the day..

What happens when a cell gets infected, so infected that it knows it is being gunned down and converted from its healthy use for parts of the body to even Zombie form pumping out viruses or bacteria, something that can destroy everything that it loves?

In its last bit of strength, it is not asking to be rescued but instead asking for mercy killing. And Cytotoxic T Cell has the job of granting that request. Once this Cytotoxic T Cell gets the message from the Helper T Cell, it knows there is a stuff to deal with and stars patrolling the area for any normal cell presenting Antigens. When it finds one, it lashes onto it and releases these stuffs and eventually break the cell membrane, killing the cell and the pathogen itself. A human cell, killing another human cell.

And now, for the Humoral Response

Humoral Response is designed to catch Pathogens that are flooding around in your body that have not actually invaded any of your cells yet. The primary players are **B Cells which are constantly patrolling your bloodstream until they get a signal from Helper T Cell that something is wrong.

B Cells are covered in antibodies that can detect and bind to a specific Antigen. A single B cell can be covered in a force of up to a hundred thousand Antibodies, say for the virus to catch just a common cold. And the B Cell next to it will have just as many receptors for Antigens. When a B Cell bumps into Pathogens that it recognizes, it attaches to it and starts cloning itself like crazy. Sometimes there are tens of that B Cell but during a cloning process, the cloned differentiate in to a new version of the original just like the T Cells did.

Most turn into Plasma/Effector Cells which use the antibodies as a blue print to create a crap thon of Antibodies for that specific Pathogen. Like two hundred Antibodies per second. Once these Antibodies are released, they bind to the Pathogen like crazy marking him to death until the Phagocytes can come along to do the dirty work. The rest of the B Cells become Memory Cells which have same preceptor and stick around providing future immunity from these invaders.

Departing Thoughts

All because my absolute favorite thing to do every single day is not dying and perhaps, having sex.I remember how @herbayomi once said we've got to make Science posts in sexy way. Now we are now at the end of this post but I really love this, I do not want to go. Macrophages, Natural Killer Cells, killing things, breaking their cell membranes, cells spilling out Antibodies and Memory Cells making sure that our Immune System hold all these intruders.

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References

• Immune system
• The immune system: Cells, tissues, function, and disease
• White blood cell
• Lymphocyte
• Antigen

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