B lymphocytes and humoral immunity
- Created by: Kittykatty2000
- Created on: 18-04-17 12:01
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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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