Complement System
The complement system is a biochemical cascade of the immune system that helps, or “complements”, the ability of antibodies to clear pathogens or mark them for destruction by other cells. The cascade is composed of many plasma proteins, synthesised in the liver, primarily by hepatocytes. The proteins work together to:
- trigger the recruitment of inflammatory cells.
- "tag" pathogens for destruction by other cells by opsonizing, or coating, the surface of the pathogen.
- forming holes in the plasma membrane of the pathogen, resulting in cytolysis of the pathogen cell, causing the death of the pathogen.
- rid the body of neutralised antigen-antibody complexes.
Elements of the complement cascade can be found in many nonmammalian species including plants, birds, fish and some species of invertebrates.
Read more about this topic: Innate Immune System
Famous quotes containing the words complement and/or system:
“A healthy man, indeed, is the complement of the seasons, and in winter, summer is in his heart.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The violent illiteracies of the graffiti, the clenched silence of the adolescent, the nonsense cries from the stage-happening, are resolutely strategic. The insurgent and the freak-out have broken off discourse with a cultural system which they despise as a cruel, antiquated fraud. They will not bandy words with it. Accept, even momentarily, the conventions of literate linguistic exchange, and you are caught in the net of the old values, of the grammars that can condescend or enslave.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)