Science Monkey

A vaccine is a biological substance designed to boost immunity against an infection caused by bacterias and viruses. These vaccines function by training the immune system to a particular infection. To dwell further we should know the basics of how the immune system functions (for more details refer to the previous article on " The production of antibodies and their roles "). The immune system relies on immune cells called the lymphocytes; they produce the chemical substance known as antibodies along with a memory cell. These secreted antibodies are used to fight against the foreign invaders by attaching to the antigen of the pathogen. This antigen is the active part of the pathogen causing infections. The binding of the antigens and the antibodies suggest how the body fights the infection.   With the case of vaccines the same antigen is injected into the body to create defences against specific diseases before you even get them. The simple concept of the working of the vaccin...

  Antibodies are the defending soldiers of the immune system. In the context of biological science they are identified to be the Y - shaped protein structures that fight against the pathogens (foreign invaders). These biochemical protein structures are produced by a specific group of immune cells called the lymphocytes. The two types of lymphocytes associated with the production of antibodies are called the Helper T-cells and the B-cells. Before moving further, we should know that the defensive fight between the pathogen and antibodies occurs based on the chemical interaction between the protein structures on the surface. This binding surface protein is known as the active site. The particular name for an active site of a pathogen is known as an antigen.  When a pathogen enters the bloodstream it is consumed by a macrophage. This macrophage is another immune cell called the phagocyte, it functions to engulf the pathogen and digest some parts of its body. As the process of...

Most of us would have come across the immune system in our bodies but do we know where exactly its located? Or the fact of how it functions ? Well digging from the basic, what does the term 'immune' stand for? It is an action of resisting or protecting a system against a counter effect, which in the case of the human body refers to the defence mechanism against outside invaders (like bacteria, viruses, fungi, and toxins produced by microbes).  Now that we know the immune system corresponds to the defence mechanism of the human body where do you think it could be located? It is known that only a group of organs functioning together can make a system, so what are the organs making up the immune system? Some of the major organs that we should know to understand the working of the immune system are  the bone marrow, the thymus, the spleen, the lymphatic vessels and nodes and so. How does these organs help with defence should be the next question, where the answer is the production...

In the recent days VIRUS is a very common term used across the globe, but do we know what they are and where the come from?  Well, on a brief note viruses are biomolecules that lives or tends to activate only when present inside a living host. This means they are non living entities that develop a living symbiotic relation when present within a living organism. In simple term viruses are identified to be an incomplete cell or a combination of protein structures that lack the full potential of sustaining life. From this it can be stated that a virus body could have been a previously lived organism, or a degenerated cell structure. Thereby suggesting these structure to be a little or far related to an existing organism.  And hence leads to various hypothesis on its origin to classify the diverse group of viruses. Some of the very common classification of viruses are based on its morphological structures, and its genetic material type (DNA or RNA). The figure below depicts the hi...