It's really a testament to nature and Darwin's theories that after all the time, effort and money we've been spending on AIDS research, the most successful antibody so far was not created by man, but by his DNA.
I Am Not An Immunologist, but antibodies are usually produced by plasma cells, after their predecessor B cells are triggered with the appropriate antigens, right? I'm pretty sure that mechanism and its memory is acquired, not innate. In other words, it's not coded for by DNA, and you can't inherit that immunity from the father. Some maternal antibodies are heritable, but I think that's through shared blood.
For 'Not An Immunologist' you seem to have a pretty good handle on this stuff. You're mostly right about the heritability stuff, but it's a bit more subtle than that.
Antibodies are built from heavy and light chains, which are in turn produced by a combinatorial recombination process: subunits get spliced together. While paternal B cells aren't going anywhere with regards to heritability, the heavy/light chain subunit repertoire is heritable! If Donor 45 is a mutant for one of those subunits, then the effect could very well be heritable.
Are any antibodies entirely genetically determined--"off the rack", so to speak? One would think that having an innate immune response to extraordinarily dangerous yet infrequently-mutating pathogens (polio, for example) would be worthwhile.
Haha, maybe I should get go get an immunology text. I think I'm pushing the limits of Wikipedia.
The process is amazing. It's a giant highly optimized molecular recognition library. Random diversity in antibody binding motifs is generated by guided mutation of the DNA coding for the proteins in the antibody. This wide repertoire is then screened for antibodies that react to 'self' molecular patterns in the body, and the B cells producing those self-reacting antibodies are deleted. One B cell produces only one kind of antibody.
There is also evidence that this antibody repertoire is further primed and refined by constant interaction with the incredible molecular diversity produced from the bacteria that live on our mucosa (that is, barrier interfaces with the environment like the lining of the gut and lungs and the skin).
The immune system naturally tweaks antibodies to make them more efficient at binding (Affinity maturation it's called). If you are trying to make a vaccine, you are better off starting off with an antibody which has already had all the hard work done on it.
It should be pointed out that the donor they used is actually infected with HIV, the antibody didn't protect him because prior to infection it wasn't affinity matured or present in high enough concentration.
If there was a heirarchy of medical treatments, vaccines would surely be at the top. A jab when you are too young to remember and suddenly debilitating fatal diseases that have plagued humans for thousands of years are no longer a problem. The immune system is unique in that you can give information to it, you can communicate with it. It's an information technology, actually. I think this is why vaccines are so fantastic, it is a treatment that collaborates with the body. Pretty much all other medical therapies involved taking a broken system and breaking it even more to achieve some kind of withered stability which is inevitability temporary and has consequences for the organism as a whole (eg giving steroids for rheumatoid arthritis, chemotherapy for cancer).
The seasonal flu vaccine is a global immune system in action. It's a molecular rss feed, an app update, a glycoprotein tweet whatever analogy you care to use, perhaps one day an individual's immune system will be part of a greater whole linked via information tech. The immune cloud it might be called.
And millions will still die because of war and poor sanitation and exploitation.
It would be pretty sad if someone used the immune cloud to distribute a virus. I wouldn't want to live in a world where I had to trust AVG anti-virus with my health.
It would be pretty sad if someone used the immune cloud to distribute a virus
Yes, that would be horrible. Imagine a deadly virus which specifically infects immune cells to spread. We could call it something like Human Immunodeficiency Virus.
You are partially on the right track. There is an innate response to pathogens exhibiting particular molecular profiles. But this innate recognition is not by antibodies, which are part of the adaptive response.
To my knowledge, there is not a repertoire of antibodies that are automatically produced, per se.
I think we're making good progress when you look at how long we've been at it vs. how long nature has. I mean we at least knew where to look for the solution!
This antibody, however it was created, will now be a good starting point for tweaking and improvement. Hopefully, it can be made to be effective against 100% (or as close as possible) of the HIV variants.
> On the other hand, the antibody would never have been noticed if we hadn't been spending all this money on research.
Indeed. But, even though he is a homosexual man, the gene would likely be passed along eventually, and run its course through the human race (if we believe Darwin). We just don't want to wait that long.
note: it would be passed one of a few ways:
1) his ancestors also had the gene, and he's not the only one to get it. He has heterosexual relatives who will pass it along, and they simply weren't found for one reason or another.
2) he wavers in his homosexuality, and passes his gene along to a few women OR he is bisexual
3) he donates sperm
4) it happens again in a heterosexual person. This gene arose in something like 30-40 years (I'm not really sure just how many) since the beginning of AIDS, which is an evolutionary blink. I think it's not unreasonable to figure it would arise again, and that it wouldn't take a bajillion years
I don't think the gene arose in 40 years. Obviously it didn't, since the man is more than 40 years old. Instead, I think it's a gene that arose via happenstance and is suddenly much more useful.
Still, the fact that it was already floating around I feel proves my point even more. If the disease ravaged us for hundreds of centuries before this cropped up, THEN it'd be pretty reasonable to say it's highly unlikely to develop again anytime soon.
