Lecture 1: Evolution of Immunity

Question 1

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Question 2

How is our immune response so complex?

Answer 2

Evolution caused co-opting between different systems to survive challenges, resulting in complex host responses

Question 3

Why is complex immune response beneficial?

Answer 3

Organisms need to respond to a wide variety of pathogens (viruses, bacteria, fungi, parasites, tumours, prions, allergens, self antigens)

Question 4

Mutation rate, generation time and population effectiveness in pathogens?

Answer 4

High mutation rate, rapid generation times, and huge effective populations

Question 5

Mutation rate, generation time and population effectiveness in hosts?

Answer 5

Low mutation rate, slow generation times, and small effective populations

Question 6

How does the immune response differ between individuals?

Answer 6

Through heritable genetic variation, caused by amino acid diversity, expression levels, and copy number variations

Question 7

What are MHC?

Answer 7

Highly polymorphic cell surface molecules, which bind peptides within cells for presentation