immunology

A few months ago, Kathryn Applegate wrote a couple posts on the adaptive immune system. Its relatively inoffensive. Just the bland 'science' Im used to hearing from theists, flavored with dull gender normative stories and analogies containing her husband and toddlers and clothes/shoes. And then at random points within the sterile descriptions of science, Applegate insists her personal choice of deity has something to do with said sterile science. No evidence or explanation why she is talking about her deity. Hysterically, her posts could be summed up as "Look at all these totally natural…
I dont understand people who view food as medicine. Well, I mean, I guess I do. Theyre terrified of disease X/Y/Z (even if X/Y/Z is treatable/preventable with modern medicine), and they think a component of food helps treat/prevent disease X/Y/Z, so they religiously eat said food. So I guess I mean to say "People who view food as medicine are being silly." Obviously, consuming food and getting proper nutrition is important. If you dont get enough Vitamin C, you get scurvy. Dont get enough iron, you get anemia. Dont get enough folic acid, your child is at risk for birth defects. Dont get…
Oh no... Im genuinely crying over this. Cedric the Tasmanian Devil died. Here is the obvious reason for why I loved Cedric: But I loved Cedric for scientific reasons too. I thought he was going to help us save Tasmanian Devils from extinction. Dr. Alex Kreiss is the cute boy in that pic.Dr Kreiss says it was a difficult day. "We would see and do something with Cedric every week so it was a very sad day and not just for me but for the keepers that looked after him since he was born, for the other vets that worked with him and that did health checks with him. So it was very sad." University of…
Yesterdays post got me so annoyed and flabbergasted-- I needed to read a nice MLV paper to cheer me up. And nothing cheers me up like using gene therapy on kids with genetic diseases, allowing them to live pretty much normal lives:Efficacy of gene therapy for X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency. Most readers of ERV know this story. Some baby boys are born with a malfunctioning gene, totally screws up their immune system. The babies are fine, for a while, because they get antibodies to most things from their mothers milk. But when its time for baby to start making his own immune…
I dunno whether this guy is a troll or not, but he asked a question I would love to answer, as it is very, very relevant to things Ive written on this blog before:Finally, if your children have been vaccinated against xyz disease, why would you care if others are NOT vaccinated, surely your children are immune to the effects the disease may pose? Joe might be a troll, but this is a fantastic question that perfectly illustrates how scientifically illiterate and self centered anti-vaxers are*. One of the many things Ive tried to emphasize about your immune system is, the fundamental randomness…
My first tech job out of college, I worked with a lovely group of Chinese ladies. They gave me a Chinese nick-name meaning: dog nose. Im working under the assumption that this wasnt an Anti-Semitic thing (lol!), but a comment on my really sensitive sense of smell. I would walk into the lab, smell gas, and be like "OMFG DID SOMEONE LEAVE THE GAS ON??" and they were like "Um, we had it on like 30 minutes ago..." I hate cologne and perfumes. They literally make me ill (either sick to my stomach, if I can run away, or a migraine if I cant escape). But I love, love, love the smell of a sweaty…
Antivaxers want green vaccines? How about vaccines produced in plants? Solar powered, green leafy plants-- Cant get much more green than that! The basic idea is that we modify plants to make viral/bacterial proteins, and then we eat the plants, and YAY! Vaccine! How could this possibly work? Doesnt everything just get digested? Well, there are a lot of viruses/bacteria that need your intestines to infect you-- Polio, enteric bacteria like salmonella and E. coli and cholera, rotavirus, norovirus, etc. Then you have viruses/bacteria that just want some kind of mucosal site (eyes, mouth,…
Helen Branswell, ace flu reporter, delivers the goodsl: TORONTO A landmark study looking at how to limit the spread of influenza has shown what experts have long believed but hadn't until now proved: Giving flu shots to kids helps protect everyone in a community from the virus. The study, led by Dr. Mark Loeb of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., showed the risk of catching the flu was lowered by nearly 60 per cent in communities where a substantial portion of kids aged three to 15 got flu shots. That level of indirect protection is nearly as good as what healthy adults might expect…
Two things I didnt intend on writing about on ERV more than a few times, but turned into repeat guests: XMRV and Vpu. Theyve finally come together. Susceptibility of xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) to retroviral restriction factors Know how I was talking about intrinsic immunity yesterday? Well, some scientists wondered how the heck XMRV was replicating in humans (especially human PBMCs), when other murine gammaretroviruses are restricted in humans because of our intrinsic immunity: Tetherin, APOBEC, Trim5. So they set out to investigate what effect (if any) these human…
tags: evolutionary biology, immunology, immune response, antibodies, parasite, avian pox virus, Poxvirus avium, nest fly, Philornis downsi, birds, ornithology, Darwin's Finches, Medium Ground Finch, Geospiza fortis, Ecuador, Galapagos Islands, researchblogging.org,peer-reviewed research, peer-reviewed paper A male Medium Ground Finch, Geospiza fortis, sits on a tree branch in Ecuador's Galapagos Islands. Image: Jen Koop. People often view the Hawaiian islands as a tropical paradise, the ideal vacation site, but you wouldn't agree with this assessment if you happen to be a bird. According…
Right-wing pundits/Conservatives/the Usual Suspects hate how much money the government has spent/is spending on HIV/AIDS. "No one gets AIDS but homos and blacks, so why the hell is the government spending all this money on AIDS and not cancer?" (random example) There is a pattern Im seeing in these kinds of people: They are stupid, and they have an inability to delay gratification. Example: HIV/AIDS research does not only benefit HIV/AIDS patients. Our understanding of the human immune system and cell biology has increased exponentially because of HIV/AIDS research, which has far reaching…
I hate how the 'new' Technorati doesnt let you see everyone whos linked to you. Sometimes, smaller blogs with less traffic write a neat post and link to me, but I dont 'see' the post unless I happen to catch one of their readers clicking to me on SiteMeter. *FROWNY FACE AT TECHNORATI* I just happened to catch an interesting post at this blag, Shiningthelights Blog. Dude might be nuts, I dunno. But I do like a Q they brought up (a month ago, *FROWNY FACE AT TECHNORATI*): Is a mouse leukemia virus contaminating vaccine reagents the cause of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome? Now, this Q might be…
Having lived with fire ants, stepped in fire ants, laid down with fire ants, and been bit just about everywhere by fire ants, the news that parasitic flies turn fire ants them into zombies by eating their brains pleases me immensely. Speaking of pleasure: Vaughn whacks the dopamine = pleasure meme. Sharon Begley says Obama may get a lot done, but he can't erase stereotype threat (so far). We may be dozing, but Europe is ordering its swine flu vaccine. D'oh! Update: We're getting a start too. "Good night, sleep tight, I love you." Why consistent bedtime routines work. Why the best…
I never had allergies until I moved to Oklahoma. Evidently, when the wind comes sweeping down the plain at +45 mph, its carrying billions and billions of grains of cedar pollen. So even though I grew up in a damn forest, Im now allergic to 'trees'. *bonus* Arnie is allergic to trees AND grass. A dog. Allergic to trees and GRASS. *fume* Well, the past couple springs I just suck it up, take two benadryl every night (give two to Arnie) and just deal with it. But this spring I got a new bit of allergy fun-- Itchy eyes. Im not talking 'aw balls something is in my eyes' itching, I mean 'OMFG DO…
Women May Be Sniffing Out Biologically-relevant Information From Underarm Sweat: Sniffed alone, the underarm odors smelled equally strong to men and women. When fragrance was introduced, only two of 32 scents successfully blocked underarm odor when women were doing the smelling; in contrast, 19 fragrances significantly reduced the strength of underarm odor for men. ... Not only were women better smellers the men, but male odors were harder to block than female odors. Even though underarm odors from the two sexes didn't differ in how strong they smelled, only So women have a better sense of…
A long-sought goal in genetics has been to develop therapies that can use correctly functioning genes to replace genes with defects. If we had the technology to predictably modify our genomes, we would have the ability to cure many diseases instead of having to place people on medications for their entire lives. For a long time, gene therapy has remained an elusive dream. But, in the past few years the dream has come closer to reality, especially in the case of ten children, who live because of researchers who kept that dream in sight (1). Figure 1. Random children Technorati Tags:…
What happens when a group of streptococci stick to cells in your throat and start to make toxins? Your body fights back by making clones. The animated video, Fighting Infection by Clonal Selection, from Etsuko Uno and Drew Berry is so good that if I didn't know better, I would almost think it's really capturing clonal selection on film. What is clonal selection? We call this process "clonal selection" because only some lucky cells get selected for cloning. These cells have proteins on their surface that are able bind to bits of stuff from bacteria or viruses. We call that stuff "antigens…
Like many people I know, I suffer from allergies, and sometimes asthma. I take drugs to control the symptoms, but they don't cure the condition. Plus, I know there can be side effects that might not be so pleasant. This is why I like hearing about sequencing projects that target the VDJ-ome. I have this fantasy about the things we could do with that information In a normal immune response (diagrammed below), antibodies on the surface of immature B cells bind to allergens (pollen, dust, whatever). That binding event, plus some help from T cells, stimulates those immature B cells and…
Last week, while attending the ISB "DNA of Innovation" symposium in honor of Lee Hood's 70th birthday, I decided to try live-blogging for the first time. Unbeknownst to others in the audience, except my husband, I quietly typed away, collecting notes and uploading impressions. But battery power has its limits, even when I have more notes to share. And despite all the fascinating speakers, I have notes enough to describe just one more. The personal genome days have only just begun, but George Church is already looking into the future. In a true "Lee Hood style tour de force" Church talked…
One of the holy grails of modern medicine is the development of a vaccine against HIV, the virus that causes AIDs. An obstacle to attaining this goal has been the difficulty in stimulating the immune system to make it produce the right kinds of antibodies. A recent finding in Science describes a gene that controls production of these antibodies and may provide insights to the development of an effective vaccine. (1). Antibodies are special kinds of proteins that bind to things, often very tightly. If they bind to the right molecules, they can prevent viruses from infecting cells and target…