The Immune System and Taylor Swift (Part 1)
Overview of the Immune System
For our first series of featured blog posts, we’ll be covering the immune system! Today’s post will just be a quick overview.
In many ways, the immune system is the original Dream Team! It’s pretty amazing what our immune system does on a daily basis. We’re constantly exposed to so many things in our environment – whether that be bacteria, viruses, chemicals, microplastics, you name it. So it’s pretty amazing that, on a typical day, we’re as healthy as we are. And that, of course, is due to our immune system. Our immune system is always hard at work, constantly adapting to new inputs and changing environments, ever since we were born. So Michael Jordan, you can step aside – this is the original Dream Team!
So what is the immune system? It’s a network of proteins, cells, tissues, and organs in our bodies that work together to defend us from infection from invading pathogens (like bacteria and viruses). Talking about the Immune system can get really confusing with a lot of different names and types of cells, but we’ll try to break it down over the next couple of blog posts. To get us started, the immune system consists of 3 levels of increasing specificity.
Level 1: Physical, Biological, and Mechanical Barriers (Non-specific)
If you think about going to a Taylor Swift concert, the Level 1 defense is like the fence going around the arena that keeps people who don’t have tickets out of the arena. It doesn’t matter who you are - if you don’t have a ticket, the fence will keep you out.
Some of these Level 1 defenses include:
Physical barriers: your skin (which prevents most invaders from being able to enter the body)
Biological and Chemical barriers: mucus (which traps particles like dust and bacteria in your nose to prevent them from continuing to and entering your lungs), tears (which includes the enzyme lysozyme, which breaks down a bacteria’s cell walls to kill it and protect your eyes from infection), and stomach acid (it’s so acidic that it kills most of the harmful bacteria and viruses that you might accidentally eat)
Mechanical barriers: coughing, vomiting, and diarrhea (all of these expel anything your body detects as being potentially harmful)
As you can see, these are all pretty effective, but they are non-specific.
Level 2: The Innate Immune System (Non-specific)
Going back to our Taylor Swift concert example, the Level 2 defense is like the security that patrols the inside of the arena. They’re making sure everyone behaves, like not getting into fights or stealing any Taylor Swift T-shirts or merch. They’re not looking for anyone in particular, but if they catch you causing trouble, they’ll arrest you.
In the immune system, the Level 2 defense is something called the innate immune system, which we cover here!
Level 3: The Adaptive Immune System (Specific)
Finally, at our Taylor Swift concert, the Level 3 defense is like the police and FBI looking for specific bad guys who might have a criminal record or have made threats against the concertgoers. The police and FBI already have their names and mugshots, and they’re scanning everyone inside the arena to make sure the bad guys don’t sneak in and cause trouble.
In the immune system, the Level 3 defense is something called the adaptive immune system, which we’ll also cover in a future, separate blog post (stay tuned!).