The Immunology Report

  The Genius Project Script Introduction: Quote & Quip Sitting in my room, reading my book on the last week of my genius project, I had a epiphany, a Eureka moment, I stated out loud, (click)“I just realized how much humans can learn from their own cells...” My name is Kevin Liu, and (click)welcome to my Genius project (click) Immunology: what we can learn and how we can improve our own worth ethic, from studying how our body systems function. (click) Now many of you may be looking at that root ology, and be thinking immediately (click) red flags! Bad idea! Etc. etc. (click) but for me, it is something that I can be passionate about, learn about, and really appreciate.   Takeaways That is why, for the past few weeks, I have been reading (click), and reading (click), and reading (click). And soon enough (click), I felt like I was kind of getting nowhere. I wasn’t really learning anything extremely significant, something life-changing that would let me see the world in a

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 Good evening! I have read through a lot of Immunobiology, as it is a college-level text book and I think I may have overestimated myself just a bit on "reading the whole thing". But, with college-level books, comes the fact that I learned a whole bunch. As the name implies, it was a very science-heavy book, and definitely needs some scientific background knowledge to fully understand what is happening.  The main thing I learned about was the complement system. No, it isn't a system where your immune system complements itself, but I think we all need a system like that right now. The complement system is made up of different distinct proteins that opsonize pathogens, or make the pathogens "appetizing" towards the phagocytes. Basically, the complement system is made up all sorts of different proteins that specialize in binding to the receptors of different pathogens, and the proteins attract immune system cells such as macrophages to break down the pathogen. Anot

Posted 3/27 Good evening folks! Thanks for tuning in once again. This week, I finished reading the book An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System. It was a more journalistic approach to the subject rather than a scientific, and I read it because it gave me a more wide lens on my subject. I would not really recommend it to people who are just getting into Immunology, because it uses some more complicated phrases and understandings that require you to have a bit of background knowledge on, which was perfect for me.  This book talks about the lives of three patients, one who suffered from cancer, Jason Greenstein, one who overcame HIV, Bob, Hoff, and a women who suffered from terrible autoimmune disease, her body attacking herself, Linda Segre.  Jason Greenstein was on the verge of death. His lymphoma (cancer of the lymphatic system) had become malicious and malignant, and by any definition terminal. His fifteen month battle with Cancer included harsh Chemo an

Posted 3/19  Alright! I have finished reading Immune: A Journey Into the Mysterious System that Keeps You Alive! It was a great book, with wonderful graphics, easy-to-understand analogies, and a great place to start learning about such a wonderful science; I would definitely recommend this book to anyone and everyone, looking to find a way to get interested in more advanced sciences, like immunology. My guess is that the easier-to-understand aspects of this book will fill up most of what I put into my presentation, with references to the deeper immune science.  Well, enough with the book report: let us get into everyone's favorite section: The Science!  Interestingly, the Immune System (I may refer to it as the IS) is actually split into two different sections: the Innate Immune System (IIS), and the Adaptive Immune System (AIS). The Innate Immune System is the first responders in any immune battle. They are like the ambulances that show up when a large amount of people get hurt. W

Posted 3/6: Blog 1! I decided what my subject is, which is going to be immunology, and different immune sciences. I found 3 books that I can read, which I believe acclimate in difficulty: first, I will start with Immune: A Journey into the Mysterious System that Keeps You Alive, then I will go on to An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of The Immune System, and then finally I will go through Immunobiology: The Immune System in Health and Disease.  This week, there were two new things that I mostly learned about this week are interferons.  Interferons are a system in place that your stomach cells, epithelial cells use to warn other cells that they are infected. When an epithelial cell recognizes that it is infected, it will send out interferons to tell other cells, "I am infected! Stop producing proteins to prevent the virus from reproducing!" Therefore the neighbor cells will pause production, and it will slow the rate at which the virus spreads. Then, another sp