Recent comments in /f/askscience

zgjs24 t1_j8x1xxa wrote

Reply to If two people are infected with the same virus (or bacteria), do they produce the same antibody to defend themselves? If not, do some people produce more effective antibodies and why? by SupercriticalBalloon

Short answer: no, they do not produce the same antibodies/immune response.

Somatic Hypermutation is not the only thing here but is one reason for this. The other reason is: T cells are actived in response to antigen being presented on cells with a so called Major Histogompatibility Complex (MHC). The antigen is not presented as a whole but rather smaller parts of it (peptides) are presented on MHC. You inherit the genes for MHC from your parents and the type of MHC that you have determines which antigen peptides can be presented on your cells.

This means that people with different MHC present different parts of an antigen to T cells which results in T cells with different receptors being activated.

Some peptides seem to be more crucial/important for a defense against a pathogen. This also means that some people are better in defending themselves against some pathogens because they can present those peptides that are more important. However, there's no type of MHC that is overall better for defense agains all different types of pathogens.

There exist thousends of genes for MHC in the human population. The reason for this might be that having many different allels and thus MHC complexes in a population makes it very hard for any one pathogen to eliminate a whole population since there probably will always be a part of the population that can defend themselves very well agains the parhogen.

My background: I'm a bioinformatics student and have had several courses about Immunology.

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LibertarianAtheist_ t1_j8x1kic wrote

Reply to comment by utterlyuncool in Is blood toxic to neurons ? by AdEnvironmental8339

>If the infection destroyed some neurons, those don't grow back. CNS neuronal damage is permanent.

I still wonder why I had (and have) worse motor distance latency than sensor distance latency at the test my neurologist did before EMG, which is called "Nerve Conduction Study". Abnormal values. The EMG results were ok.

He asked me if I was exposed to toxins as a I child.

Initially I thought: maybe rapid development during puberty contributed to the stretching of nerves affecting those just like stretch marks? But then why would it only affect motor speed and not sensor?

Probably it has something to do with what you wrote. Irreversible damage/death of neurons due to childhood illnesses or something. Why motor and not sensor is an open question, could be different parts of the CNS affected.

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vibriojoey t1_j8x077u wrote

Reply to Where do hormones for HRT and other therapies come from? by Lumpy-Spot

Insulin is made by bacteria now

Testosterone is synthesized from plants that produce similar compounds that we can convert in a lab to create it. Estrogen is done through similar means as well. But bacteria may be used as well to create enzymes needs to syntheize it or make the entire hormone but every manufactuer has their methods and a lot of if it based on cost of the method and the total yield.

But strong knowledge of chemistry means their are multiple ways to get what you want and nature is wonderful resource for bioprospecting and finding tools you need. Again it all depends on price and some methods are more expensive then others. If you have thr funds to invest for the right machinery and tools you can easily make any method work to mass produce enough to make great profits.

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dijc89 t1_j8wt3pb wrote

Reply to If two people are infected with the same virus (or bacteria), do they produce the same antibody to defend themselves? If not, do some people produce more effective antibodies and why? by SupercriticalBalloon

Somatic recombination in b-cells and t-cells is essentially a numbers game, leading to a variety of b-cell receptors and consequently antibodies. When one of those b-cells recognizes an epitope which belongs to a pathogen, it's pure coincidence, and only after that the clonal expansion and antibody production of this specific cell is initiated.

That's why the search for neutralizing antibodies for SARS-COV-2 still continues, because new types of neutralizing antibodies are still found in patient sera, which might be more potent in preventing severe disease.

To answer briefly: The chance that two people produce the same antibody (ies) is non-zero but rather low. How effective in neutralizing an antibody is depends on a lot of things, pure chance being the most important.

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Ech_01 t1_j8ws201 wrote

Reply to If two people are infected with the same virus (or bacteria), do they produce the same antibody to defend themselves? If not, do some people produce more effective antibodies and why? by SupercriticalBalloon

It’s more complex than it looks like. The body randomly creates many different antibodies against many different type of antigens. The one that’s able to bind on the antigen on the virus is the one that will start reproducing and creating millions of itself if necessary to fight the specific virus.

The two antibodies of the two different persons will be most likely be different. One of them will probably have a higher affinity towards the virus compared to the other person which will mean that that person may also fight the virus faster.

I can’t go into much more detail since I still haven’t been taught much about this topic yet.

Source: med student

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MXSynX t1_j8wq4ze wrote

Reply to If two people are infected with the same virus (or bacteria), do they produce the same antibody to defend themselves? If not, do some people produce more effective antibodies and why? by SupercriticalBalloon

Depends. The body creates antibodies towards more or less specific parts of surface molecules, the antigens. Now if your body manages to create antibodies that are found on both pathogens, they will both be subjected to the immune respone. There are antibodies more specific, so only a certain type of antigen can be adhered to, while other antibodies will attach to almost anything.

Now if person A develops antibodies that have a higher affinity to a antigen than person B, theirs will be more effective at binding pathogens. But there are so many more parameters to check that this alone is not enough to effectively fend off illnesses.

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Onetap1 t1_j8wozaa wrote

Reply to If soot is highly combustible, why doesn't it burn off before it accumulates? by TheIronKurtin

Because of convection mostly.

The fire mostly happens in the bed, the bottom and you add new fuel on top of the hot burning coals.

The heat radiated from the fire bed causes the new fuel to break down (pyrolysis) into flammable gases, vapours and solid particles.

However, hot air rises, so the air flow goes upwards, through the bed of the fire. The excess air and combustion products go upwards, through the as-yet unburnt fresh fuel, and it carries away some of the combustible gases, vapours & particles upwards, away from the fire bed. It doesn't get burned and that's the soot.

Look up downdraught gasifier stoves and secondary combustion.

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