• Question: How does memory cells of the inmune system work? And when do they activate?

    Asked by Eric_ib to Ben, Lizzie, Francis, Max, Sian on 14 Mar 2018. This question was also asked by Paulito2005.
    • Photo: Ben Mulhearn

      Ben Mulhearn answered on 14 Mar 2018:

      This is a great question Eric! Let’s use an antibody-producing B cell as an example. First of all you have a naive B cell – this is one which has never seen a microbe. Once it gets activated it takes that naive B cell a little time to produce an effective antibody against the microbes, but once they do they can turn into a number of different cells. One type is a plasma cell – these are cells which produce lots and lots of the antibody to help get rid of the microbe. Another type of cell produced is a MEMORY B CELL,now these cells are very long-lived, years in fact, so that if the microbe comes along again they can immediately turn into plasma cells and produce lots and lots of antibody against them. This is known as IMMUNOLOGICAL MEMORY.

    • Photo: Max Jamilly

      Max Jamilly answered on 14 Mar 2018:

      Hey Eric! Great question – and Ben’s answer is great too. Memory B cells hang out in your bone marrow and have an amazing ability to start producing antibodies very quickly in response to nasty microbes, even many years after that microbe last infected you.

      There’s another incredible kind of memory cell called a memory T cell – you probably have almost a trillion of them in your body. B cells are the brains of your immune system, but T cells are the brawn. When you are infected, it’s the T cells which actively fight and clear the invading microbes. We don’t fully understand how memory T cells work, but you probably build them up in your early childhood. Then they hide in your blood and tissues, waiting for an infection. If the invading microbe is one that they’ve seen before, the memory T cells respond and grow MUCH more quickly than ‘naive’ T-cells which haven’t seen the same microbe before.

      The immune system still hides so many mysteries. Become a scientist and help us explore them!

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