Care for horses & livestock/farm animals
Care for cats, dogs & other companion animals
If you’ve ever wondered how a vaccine given decades ago can still protect against infection, you have your plasma cells to thank. Plasma cells are long-lived B cells that reside in the bone marrow and churn out antibodies against previously encountered vaccines or pathogens.
Viruses and their hosts are in a eternal game of one-upmanship. If a host cell evolves a way to stop a virus from spreading, the virus will look for a new path. And so on and so forth.
Ten professors from the University of Pennsylvania have been named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. They are among a class of 391 members honored for their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. Election as a Fellow of AAAS, the world’s largest scientific society, is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers.
The innate immune system serves as a first-line defense, responding to infections almost immediately after a pathogen makes its way into the body. This response is carried out in two major ways: the cell can amplify the message that the body has been invaded, triggering an inflammatory response to recruit other cells to help fight off the pathogen, or the cell can undergo programmed cell death in order to stop the spread of infection and perhaps even release signaling molecules that alert neighboring cells to the presence of an invader.
Before a mosquito can transmit a disease like dengue fever, Zika, or malaria to a human, the mosquito itself must get infected. That means the parasite or virus must find a way around the natural defenses of the insect’s immune system.