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Furrypocketpussy t1_ixaswyo wrote

Your body has dendritic cells in basically every tissue, so when an infection happens the dendritic cell will mature and lose its adhesion to the tissue. After that it will follow a chemokine trail to the nearest lymp node where it will present the antigen to mature B and T cells in the lymph node. Your lymp nodes also monitor the lymph for antigens, so the closest ones to the infection site will get the most of them and will react the most due to the higher concentration

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silent_cat t1_ixcimtd wrote

That's how I'd heard it explained: rather than having antigens spread across you body in the hope they match, they hang around in the lymph nodes and monitor the stuff coming past.

It's said the mammalian immune system is the second most complex known system in the world, after the brain. Every time I hear more about it I'm amazed.

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uuicon t1_ixc2u0e wrote

Wow, you explain this so well, I almost feel able to understand what you are saying.

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octopusgardener0 t1_ixdrlnv wrote

The neighborhood watch in parts of your body has people trained to look out for one thing, then when they see it they go down to the nearest police station who sends out officers trained to handle some common problems while beginning training new ones to help the first responders with that one thing

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GinGimlet t1_ixdeflh wrote

This is correct, also concentrating the cells presenting antigen and the cells that need antigen to activate/multiply increases the rate at which an immune response occurs. I can't remember the exact numbers but lots of T cells can contact dendritic cells per hour when they are stationary in a Lymph Node, increasing the odds that the correct ones are found; and then those activated T cells can go help other cells out, like B cells, which are also located in high numbers in the lymph nodes. It's essentially all about efficiency.

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