Tag Archives: immune_response

The Immune System – Like fighting invaders on the Great Wall

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First line of defence (innate immunity): This is like a moat and castle walls, preventing invasion by foreigners. There are physical and chemical barriers to infection.

Second line of defence (innate immunity): If the foreign materials breach the first line of defence, an infection forms. This is the inflammation (heated battle) where invaders are being killed indiscriminately.

Third line of defence (active immunmity) : The last line of defence is the active, specific response by trained killer cells (ninjas!) that recognise their targets and actively seek them out and destroy them. They may be proteins or pathogens that have taken over the reproductive capacity of the cell (prions and viruses, for example), so the infected cell must be destroyed.

Gene Technology Access Centre’s Online courses – Active immunity

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At the Gene Technology Access Centre for the “Body at War – Day of Immunology” seminar and workshops, you learned about pathogens, the human body’s response to antigens and how vaccines have been developed to reduce the spread of disease.  You conducted ELISA tests to identify infected individuals and observed diseased tissues through microscopy. A valuable activity was the Immunology Game, which demonstrated the response to antigens at a cellular level and gave you the experience of controlling the movement of white blood cells (dendrites, plasma cells, macrophages and B and T cells) around the body.

GTAC also have several online courses that I would like you to complete this week.