Theme 1a Overview of Immune System

Question 1

What is considered the response time of the innate and adaptive immune systems?

Answer 1

Innate - minutes to hours
Adaptive -days

Question 2

What is the specificity of the innate and adaptive immune systems?

Answer 2

Innate - limited to fixed specificity
Adaptive -Highly diverse, adapts to improve during the course of the immune response

Question 3

Response to repeat infection of Innate and adaptive immune system?

Answer 3

Innate - same each time
Adaptive - more rapid and effective with each subsequent exposure

Question 4

Major components of innate and adaptive immune sytems?

Answer 4

Innate

• Barriers (skin and mucus membranes)
• Phagocytes
• Pattern recognition molecules
• Complement
• Antibody dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC)

Adaptive

• T and B lymphocytes
• antigen-specific receptors / antibodies

Question 5

What are the four major categories of pathogens?

Answer 5

Viruses, Bacteria, Fungi, and Parasites

Question 6

Beyond pathogens, what else might trigger an immune response?

Answer 6

physical damage like a cut or tear.

Question 7

Tailoring of the immune response depends on what three factors?

Answer 7

• Size of pathogen (uni vs multicellular)
• Replicative capacity (fast vs non-replicating)
• Location (intra vs extracellular, different organs)

Question 8

What is the difference between PRRs and T & B cell receptors?

Answer 8

• PRRs are germ-line encoded and will bind to commonly occurring PAMPs like peptidoglycan which are found on.
• B & T cells bind to more specific antigens and undergo multiple random splicing events in their genes before they will be transcripted or translated.

Question 9

What are the two components of the adaptive immune response?

Answer 9

1) Humoral (combats pathogens via antibodies that are produced by B-cells)
2) Cell-mediated (T-cells which eradicate pathogens, clear infected self-cells, aid other cells in inducing immunity)

Question 10

What are the antigens bound by B & T-cells most commonly made of?

Answer 10

Amino acid sequences.

Question 11

What is tolerance?

Answer 11

A part of B & T-cell selection which prevents antibodies/ receptors being made which would recognize self- antigens

Question 12

Clonal selection

Answer 12

production of a large number of B or T-cell clones in response to antigen recognition.

Question 13

What are the primary and secondary memory responses?

Answer 13

• Primary (The first exposure to an antigen leaves behind memory cells after the infection is cleared)
• Secondary (The second exposure to the antigen will lead to those lymphocytes binding and stimulating a faster and larger response)

Question 14

What are some of the ways the immune system destroys threats?

Answer 14

• Complement
• Phagocytosis
• opsonization
• antibody dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC)