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An immune response is a physiological reaction which occurs within an organism in the context of inflammation for the purpose of defending against exogenous factors. These include a wide variety of different toxins, viruses, intra- and extracellular bacteria, protozoa, helminths, and fungi which could cause serious problems to the health of the host organism if not cleared from the body.
In biology, it refers to damage caused to an organism by its own immune response, as a result of an infection. It could be due to mismatch between pathogen and host species, and often occurs when an animal pathogen infects a human (e.g. avian flu leads to a cytokine storm which contributes to the increased mortality rate).
The side-chain theory (German, Seitenkettentheorie) is a theory proposed by Paul Ehrlich (1854–1915) to explain the immune response in living cells.Ehrlich theorized from very early in his career that chemical structure could be used to explain why the immune response occurred in reaction to infection.
In immunology, clonal selection theory explains the functions of cells of the immune system (lymphocytes) in response to specific antigens invading the body. The concept was introduced by Australian doctor Frank Macfarlane Burnet in 1957, in an attempt to explain the great diversity of antibodies formed during initiation of the immune response .
Acquired immunity depends upon the interaction between antigens and a group of proteins called antibodies produced by B cells of the blood. There are many antibodies and each is specific for a particular type of antigen. Thus immune response in acquired immunity is due to the precise binding of antigens to antibody.
This process – called "clonal expansion" – allows the body to quickly mobilise an army of clones, as and when required. Such immune response is anticipatory and its specificity is assured by pre-existing clones of lymphocytes, which expand in response to specific antigen (process called "clonal selection").
The adaptive immune system evolved in early vertebrates and allows for a stronger immune response as well as immunological memory, where each pathogen is "remembered" by a signature antigen. [55] The adaptive immune response is antigen-specific and requires the recognition of specific "non-self" antigens during a process called antigen ...
DSAIRM (Dynamical Systems Approach to Immune Response Modeling) is a R package that is designed for studying infection and immune response dynamics without prior knowledge of coding. [40] Other useful applications and learning environments are: Gepasi, [41] [42] Copasi, [43] BioUML, [44] Simbiology (MATLAB) [45] and Bio-SPICE. [46]