The immune system.

Lindsay B Nicholson

doi:10.1042/ebc20160017

Abstract

All organisms are connected in a complex web of relationships. Although many of these are benign, not all are, and everything alive devotes significant resources to identifying and neutralizing threats from other species. From bacteria through to primates, the presence of some kind of effective immune system has gone hand in hand with evolutionary success. This article focuses on mammalian immunity, the challenges that it faces, the mechanisms by which these are addressed, and the consequences that arise when it malfunctions.

Highlights

Received: 14 January 2016 Revised: 06 July 2016 Accepted: 11 July 2016Version of Record published: 26 October 2016The problems that the mammalian immune system solves are not restricted to higher animals; they are faced by all forms of life and are ignored by none
When we study antigen-specific immune cells in these circumstances, they appear to be very different from both naive cells and effector cells
This has proven to be extremely difficult to achieve in human populations, where immune responses are mediated through a myriad of overlapping antigen specificities, but it can be demonstrated in animal models of autoimmune disease, which provides hope that such therapies can be developed

Summary

Introduction

The problems that the mammalian immune system solves are not restricted to higher animals; they are faced by all forms of life and are ignored by none. The antigens that are presented from the liver of one person will be different from the antigens presented from the liver of an unrelated person In this way, the representation of self established by an individual’s MHC, presenting its self-proteins to its own lymphocytes, is a very private system of identification that is difficult to copy, allowing the immune system to discriminate between foreign tissue transplants, invading infections and cancerous cells. The other crucial recognition system of the adaptive immune response, antibodies that are produced by B-cells, go through a process of maturation and selection that serves to greatly increase the strength with which they bind c 2016 The Author(s)

B Testing in thymus

B A A and B Nil

Conclusion