Question

If you were to use war as a metaphor to think about the immune response and the development of memory, do you think that immunologic memory is more like carrying around a photograph of the enemy for quick future identification, or like making replicas of the most effective weapons from the previous battle to have on hand if needed, or both?

Answer 1

It is both.

When a pathogen attacks to the body first time then the immune system of this person become activated against pathogen. In the immune system various kind of cells and proteins are present which takes part in the immune system activation. For example T cells, B cells, lymphocytes, macrophages, dendritic cells, Antigen presentimg cell, monocytes etc, are the cells of immune system. These cells takes part in different pathways for the immune system.

When we talk about memmory and weapon against enemy so we can say that both concepts are visible here. When pathogen attacks then T cell process the antigen towards the B lymphocyte cells. When B lymphocyte cell make interaction with antigen then it is divided into two kind of cells.

One is memmory cells and another is Plasma cell.

So these memory cells keeps memory or recognization power against that particular pathogen. If this pathogen occurs again, then these memory cells recognise them easily and then start the process of destruction. At the first time of pathogen exposure, memory cells was produced and for the multiple times they act themselves as memory against individual pathogen. the memory for individual antigen is specific particular kind of antigen.

Plasma cells: plasma cells are like weapons against enemy. Plasma cells secrete secretory antibody which make antigen antibody interaction and destroys the pathogen. The production of antibody occurs at the first time of antigen exposure. when multiple time exposer occurs than the memorie cells recognise them due to previous memmory, as what kind of antibodies against them was need to produce.

Overall we can say that memory cell act as a photograph for recognization and antibodies act as weapon to complete the war.

Thanks.