B lymphocytes and humoral immunity

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Humoral immunity:

  • Involves antibodies - soluble in the blood and tissue fluid of the body
  • Each B cell starts to produce a specific antibody that responds to one specific antigen
  • When an antigen enters the blood or tissue fluid, there will be once B cell that has an antibody on its surface whose shape exactly fits the antigen, this is because they are complementary
  • The antigen enters the B cell by endocytosis and gets presented on its surface
  • T helper cells bind to these processed antigens and stimulate the B cells to divide my mitosis to form a clone of identical B cells, all which produce the antibody which is specific to the foreign antigen
  • This is called clonal selection and accounts for the body's ability to respond rapidly to any of a vast number of antigens
  • As each clone produces one specific antibody these antibodies are reffered to as monoclonal antibodies

In each clone, the cells produced develop into 1 of 2 types of cell -

  • The production of antibodies and memory cells is known as the primary immune respone

Plasma cells:

  • Secrete antibodies unually into the blood plasma
  • These can survive for only a few days,

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