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A scanning electron microscope image of a single human lymphocyte. The adaptive immune system, AIS, also known as the acquired immune system, or specific immune system is a subsystem of the immune system that is composed of specialized cells, organs, and processes that eliminate pathogens specifically.
The immune system may respond in multiple ways to an antigen; a key feature of this response is the production of antibodies by B cells (or B lymphocytes) involving an arm of the immune system known as humoral immunity. The antibodies are soluble and do not require direct cell-to-cell contact between the pathogen and the B-cell to function.
Consequently, immune responses against viruses that are able to do so, such as herpes viruses, are largely dependent on cross-presentation for a successful immune response. Overall, cross presentation aids in facilitating an adaptive immune response against intracellular viruses and tumor cells.
They can also act as scavengers that rid the body of worn-out cells and other debris and as antigen-presenting cells (APCs) that activate the adaptive immune system. [36] Dendritic cells are phagocytes in tissues that are in contact with the external environment; therefore, they are located mainly in the skin, nose, lungs, stomach, and ...
The human immune system relies on a plethora of cell-cell signaling pathways to transmit information about a cell's health and microenvironment. Many of these pathways are mediated by soluble ligands, cytokines, that fit like a lock-and-key into adjacent cell surface receptors.
The adaptive immune system and antigen-specific receptor generation (TCR, antibodies) are responsible for adaptive immune memory. [citation needed] After the inflammatory immune response to danger-associated antigen, some of the antigen-specific T cells and B cells persist in the body and become long-living memory T and B cells. After the ...
Stimulating cells to secrete a variety of cytokines that influence the function of other cells involved in adaptive immune responses and innate immune responses. [3] [4] Cell-mediated immunity is directed primarily at microbes that survive in phagocytes and microbes that infect non-phagocytic cells.
The immune network theory is a theory of how the adaptive immune system works, that has been developed since 1974 mainly by Niels Jerne [1] and Geoffrey W. Hoffmann. [2] [3] The theory states that the immune system is an interacting network of lymphocytes and molecules that have variable (V) regions. These V regions bind not only to things that ...