Week 12: The Adaptive Immune System

This is really interesting stuff to learn. It's a real pain in the backside to study though, because there are lots of areas of uncertainty and cross-over between topics and crazy crazy amounts of details that I probably won't (I hope) need to know.

The problem I have with studying this stuff is that there isn't really any basic or fundamental starting point. In order to understand something (which is one of my patented techniques for learning it), I first need to understand 2 other things. And so on. Which rapidly escalates into an exponentially self-referential circle. Yuck.

So I wasted a lot of time today reading everything to try to figure out where to start. It just did my head in in the end and I had to walk off to the shops and drown my sorrows in a carton of chocolate milk. (This is stuff of true drama, is it not??) I came back and decided to start at an arbitrary place learning arbitrary things, and slowly but surely I figure it all out. Phew!

Oh, I forgot to mention what the adaptive immune system actually IS. Well, it's a whole bunch of crazy little different types of cells that sail around in your blood just waiting their whole lives for the one specific thing they are primed to recognize. Kind of like a traffic cop who sits by a road checking if people are speeding, but there are millions of them and they'll only pull you over if your car has the special number plate they've been waiting for. And when they find it, they really go to town on you. The traffic cop splits into millions of copies like that guy from The Matrix, and generally opens up a can of whup-ass on you. (Apparently the thymus is very important for this. I didn't know I had a thymus until two months ago.)

Sure, that's not how it's explained in text-books. But when you're sick and you see a doctor, this is what he's thinking about. He's thinking about traffic cops, number plates, and The Matrix. And your thymus. No wonder he looks distracted.

Next!