Functions
Adaptive immunity is triggered in vertebrates when a pathogen evades the innate immune system and generates a threshold level of antigen.
The major functions of the adaptive immune system include:
- the recognition of specific “non-self” antigens in the presence of “self”, during the process of antigen presentation.
- the generation of responses that are tailored to maximally eliminate specific pathogens or pathogen infected cells.
- the development of immunological memory, in which each pathogen is “remembered” by a signature antibody. These memory cells can be called upon to quickly eliminate a pathogen should subsequent infections occur.
Read more about this topic: Adaptive Immune System
Famous quotes containing the word functions:
“When Western people train the mind, the focus is generally on the left hemisphere of the cortex, which is the portion of the brain that is concerned with words and numbers. We enhance the logical, bounded, linear functions of the mind. In the East, exercises of this sort are for the purpose of getting in tune with the unconscious—to get rid of boundaries, not to create them.”
—Edward T. Hall (b. 1914)
“Let us stop being afraid. Of our own thoughts, our own minds. Of madness, our own or others’. Stop being afraid of the mind itself, its astonishing functions and fandangos, its complications and simplifications, the wonderful operation of its machinery—more wonderful because it is not machinery at all or predictable.”
—Kate Millett (b. 1934)
“Mark the babe
Not long accustomed to this breathing world;
One that hath barely learned to shape a smile,
Though yet irrational of soul, to grasp
With tiny finger—to let fall a tear;
And, as the heavy cloud of sleep dissolves,
To stretch his limbs, bemocking, as might seem,
The outward functions of intelligent man.”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)