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Yes, it's really fascinating stuff. Just to add to that, cells must present a continuous sample of their proteasome on the cell surface in the form of a short
by dm319 5y ago
Yes, it's really fascinating stuff. Just to add to that, cells must present a continuous sample of their proteasome on the cell surface in the form of a short peptide 9-12 amino acids long. T cells will recognise when the cell is producing protein it shouldn't be (i.e. because it became cancerous or infected with a virus), even if only one amino acid is incorrect.
It learns this in the thymus, which has a bizarre gene called AIRE which switches on genes from all over the body, essentially creating a representation of the entire body in the thymus gland as a sort of sandbox before they are let out.
However, we don't have enough T cells to recognise every possible sequence of 11 amino acids (which would weigh around 1.5 tons), so T cells must be so-called 'cross-reactive'[1]. And therefore other factors must go into how T cells respond to abnormalities.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/nri3279 https://www.nature.com/articles/nri3279
- dekhn 5y agoyep, i was referring to AIRE without naming it. I saw a talk about it years ago and it blew my mind. In retrospect, it seems to just sort of fall out from the way you'd expect adaptive immunity to evolve, though.
- hallway_monitor 5y agoI don't see many YouTube links posted here, but this Kurzgeasgt video blew my mind on this topic. Our immune system really is amazing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmpuerlbJu0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmpuerlbJu0
- whatshisface 5y agoI would have expected it to send out T-cells around the fetal body to pick up protein signatures. I'm surprised that it makes them all in one place.
- csdvrx 5y agoWhy go samples all the files from all over the filesystem if they are deterministically created from a piece of code you've got a copy of?
- k12sosse 5y agoTo check for corruption, I suppose (validation).
- amluto 5y agoWhat an excellent idea! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_tolerance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_tolerance
- dekhn 5y agoThanks, I had forgotten about this and had actually mixed parts of it up with in-thymic training