Immunology Flow Chart

[Stiganator]

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[Gibsons]

Originally posted by: Stiganator
I'm taking this immunology class and I'm a little over my head. I was wondering if anyone has seen a flow chart showing how the B-Cells, T-Cells, antigens, mast cells, eosionophils, neutraphils, basophils work together.

There are charts of their lineage/differentiation, but a chart showing all those interactions would be too cluttered to be useful, imo.

Start by doing a hard and fast memorization of the basics, so that you don't have to even think about it. Make flash cards.

Start with myeloid cells:
Neutrophil - antibacterial phagocyte
Eosinophil - antiparasitic
Basophil - histamine producing
Monocytes and macrophages - phagocytes for lots of things
Mast cell - like a basophil, but fixed

The lymphoid cells are more complex, but:
B cells - make antibodies
T Helper cells - Helpers are responsible for finding the right immune cells and activating them. At this level, mostly B cells and macrophages.
T Killer cells - kill infected cells (this is mostly a concern with viral infections, but there are others). consider that antibodies are not very helpful (or even useless) vs. an intracellular pathogen.
NK cells - kill cells that don't express MHC class I (other things as well, but stick with that for starters)

Once you get those down, look at MHC class I & II and the T cells. Then go over the antibodies, learn what cells have receptors for which ones.

I'm not even going to begin to talk about dendritic cells here...

edit: One thing about all this is that if you try to take it in all at once, it's too much. Learning the basics about each cell type at the beginning will allow you to read something about larger processes without having to think back every sentence.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

What I've thought would be helpful would be a three dimensional rotatable chart similar to how internet nodes are demonstrated. The various interactions would be able to be shown in higher dimension representations. While it wouldn't be possible to view everything all at once, by manipulating rotation and using colors it would be possible to view interactions and relationships more clearly than with just a line graph.

 

[BigDH01]

Originally posted by: Stiganator
I'm taking this immunology class and I'm a little over my head. I was wondering if anyone has seen a flow chart showing how the B-Cells, T-Cells, antigens, mast cells, eosionophils, neutraphils, basophils work together.

If it was anything like my Immunology class, they're going to concentrate mostly on lymphocytes. Where they develop and how they develop affinity to antigens and their DNA is spliced. I think it's important to know the other families, but I would concentrate mostly on B-Cells, and CD4 and CD8 T-Cells.

You might also want to know what kind of antibodies are expressed at different stages of infection, IgM, IgG. And how these antibodies are found in the bloodstream or in tissue (singular or pentamer). Also know what's better in aiding phagocytosis and complement activation.

I think the others will mostly be mentioned in passing, but it's really the lymphocytes (and related functions) that seemed to carry the burden in my tests.

You're lucky though, when I took virology, I had to memorize nearly every aspect of 21 different families of viruses, including the number of base pairs and gene orientation/positioning on their respective nucleotide strands.