Nervous System Next Week

Good job on the Immune System Quiz today. Next week, we will start a unit on the Nervous System. Have a wonderful weekend!

EXTRA LEARNING: 

As an ending note to the Immune System, I found the following really interesting article about how scientists are using the machinery of the immune system to fight cancer! In class, we learned many things about the human immune system and how it protects us from disease. Some background information: Red blood cells have a protein (formally known as CD47 but you can think of them as "do not eat" proteins) that signals macrophages to not eat them as they circulate through your body. Well, cancer cells have somehow taken advantage of this "do not eat" signal to trick the immune system to ignore them. In fact, they have more CD47 proteins than healthy cells. Fortunately, though, some scientists at Stanford have now been able to block the CD47 protein with an antibody. Remember the role of antibodies, those Y-shaped proteins that bind to foreign particles to signal them for destruction by macrophages. Without their "do not eat" signals, cancer cells are now vulnerable to being destroyed by the immune system! Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Shorter article: Science (March, 26, 2012).