Question: What is the most interesting thing about the immune system?

Matt Bilton answered on 10 Nov 2014:

This is a great question because it’s really hard to answer. Amongst the white blood cells that form the specialist part of your immune system there are a whole range of different types with different skills. Together they can work to respond to pathogens, whether ones that pass through your blood or in your tissues, whether they live inside of your cells, or outside. There are cells that can kill, and there are cells that make sure your immune system remembers.

I think the way the immune system has evolved to consist of so many different types of cells, which can work together in different situations, over different terrains and against different enemies – like a disease fighting army! – is pretty neat.

Successful pathogens – like tuberculosis bacteria – are those which have evolved to take advantage of, or hide from certain parts of the immune system. The way that some immune cells can fill in for others during certain types of infection, when the pathogen is good at hiding away from other parts of the immune system – is really interesting to me.

For researchers, therefore, it’s also important to look at people who get sick or not when they’re faced with such a bacteria. Then we can start to try and figure out which bits of the immune system are important in specific diseases, like tuberculosis, when you face attack from a bug with tricks up its sleeve!