Blog One: 3/7, From Interferons to Mars, to T-Cells
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 special immune system cell called the Plasmacytoid Dendretic Cell picks up the interferons, and brings them to the lymphatic system.
The lymphatic system is the place where your body flushes all the mucus and other waste liquids to be recycled, but also the place where the Immune System lays its base. One of the amazing things of the immune system, is that it has the ability to prepare for any virus to ever exist in existence!! You, yes you, have an immune system that could theoretically be able to fight an influenza-like virus that could've originated in year 2310 on Mars. Personally, I find that astonishing. Imagine your immune system was a chef, and you have 50 different types of vegetables, And you can choose only one. Now imagine you have 6 different types of meat and you can only choose one, and finally, 27 different types of grain, and you can only choose one. So, you are a chef which makes meals with 3 different types of food. From only 83 different ingredients, you can make 8,262 different "main course" meals, as well as 433 different types of "deserts", and now you have 3,577,446 different possible meals, and that many diseases that your body can prepare to fight against. That is statistically amazing!
Now, T-Cells, the most common-known immune system cell, takes about 1 day to cycle through the entire lymphatic system. That's why it takes a few days for you to get over an illness: that one T-cell has to find that one antigen or interferon that it can bind to, and then it can start to fight the virus. This means that the vast majority of T-cells in your body currently are only cycling around. If a virus infected you, but then all your T-Cells immediately went into action, your one T-Cell which can actually fight the virus will be crushed between all the other T-Cells, which at this point cannot do anything, and you will die. It would be an understatement to say it's good that that's not how the immune system works.
Well, the first section has ended, and I have made good progress into my first book. I say I've read about a third of the book, and I'm making steady progress.
Edit 3/7: I have commented on Stefan, Parth, and Kevin Gao's websites.
I like how you make it easy to understand even though what you are learning is more complex. Keep at it, good luck. -Dani Kundtz
ReplyDeleteI like how you made your post visual with background pictures as well as keeping it informational with technical terms. I was just wondering, how are you going to show progress to the audience? Maybe taking short quizzes or other academic activities, as a thought. - Eric
ReplyDeleteThanks for the recommendation, Eric! I will remember that as an idea. My idea to show progress is by listing the new things I have learned every week, but of course, find ways to use nice analogies and play some humor.
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