How does the immune system VDJ region recombination work, and why
do animals employ this system vs. separately encoding all their
antibodies as separate genes?
Question 1: How does the Mycobacterium
initially evade the immune system? What role does the immune system
play in preventing the spread of infection?
Question 2: Describe the difference between
antigenic drift and antigenic shift? Which one is primarily
responsible for the changes in the flu vaccine each year? Which
phenomenon can lead to new pandemic strains?
1. What are the risks and benefits of using recombination to
generate new receptors on the developing T and B cells?
2. There is a certain symmetry about B and T cell development.
In each case there is a chain that undergoes VJ recombination and
one that does V(D)J recombination. Do you have any thoughts about
why this might be?
3. When antigen is recognized the system develops Effector and
Memory cells. Why do you think we have immunological memory?...
How does SARS_COV2 attack the immune system? How does it affect
the pulmonary system? What makes this disease so devastating for
some, resulting in 'cytokine storm', the need for a ventilator, and
death? For survivors, what are the long term effects of having this
disease? Finally, after doing some research, what questions do you
have about this disease?
Coronaviruses are known to have higher than usual recombination
frequencies for RNA viruses. How does recombination play a role in
genomic variation? How might it affect the pathology and spread of
SARS-CoV-2? anything helps