Immunology 6

Question 1

how does the quality of B cell responses change from primary infection to secondary infection?

Answer 1

primary: IgM mostly, which is low affinity, low levels of specific B cells
secondary: IgG and IgA, high affinity, more specific B cells

Question 2

why are the number of cells in the secondary response higher than the primary?

Answer 2

due to the memory pool of B cells made after primary activation

Question 3

how does IgG take over from IgM in a secondary infection?

Answer 3

isotype switching and mutations in BCR from affinity maturation

Question 4

define herd immunity

Answer 4

when a large proportion of the community becomes immune to a disease, making its spread less likely, and the whole community becomes protected, not just those who are immune

Question 5

what does a vaccine mimic?

Answer 5

first exposure

Question 6

what were the two main original types of vaccines?

Answer 6

the live attenuated and whole killed/inactivated

Question 7

what does a vaccine contain?

Answer 7

the antigen plus adjuvants

Question 8

what are adjuvants?

Answer 8

they bind to TLRs and cause upregulation of costimulatory molecules and cytokine secretion on the dendritic cell for full lymphocyte activation

Question 9

how do protein vaccines work?

Answer 9

we manufacture a protein which we know the immune system responds to e.g an M protein or spike protein
- also virus-like-particles (look like virus but no DNA or RNA)