Just recently got a flu shot, and it got me wondering: who or what exactly is our immune system?
I understand the basic concept of vaccines (i.e. injecting with a weaker version of the pathogen or mRNA so that our bodies are able to produce the necessary proteins to destroy the intrusive body quicker next time). Correct me if this is wrong.
The thing is, who exactly stores this information? Who in our body detects the virus, and tells the body to produce X or Y thing? How does it know this was seen before? How come they are able to store this information for every foreign body that has ever entered our organism?
The whole analogy of white blood cells being like “cops” and vaccines acting as those “wanted” posters make sense, but I imagine this works differently in our body.
Thanks
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B cells. B cells roam around and are all like “bitch, whatchu doing here?” (they start every sentence with “bitch…”, that’s why they’re B cells) If they don’t like the answer you give they straight up cut you and take a piece of you to take to their dog, Antibody. Antibody gets that scent of you, boy, and now you fucked. B cell tells Antibody, “bitch, seek” and seek he does, cuz he’s got your scent. B cell got these other boys on the street, Macrophages, that look out for Antibody when he’s seekn’ and when Antibody starts barkin, Macrophage come to finish the job. So don’t get cut in them streets.
(I took immunology 5 years ago, I don’t use it for work, and this is what I pieced together just now. Way more complicated but this is the gist of adaptive immunity)
*u/Jkei is the real deal. Thanks for your knowledge. Don’t get cut in them streets.
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