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ImmunologyVirology

Vaccination saves millions of lives

According to the WHO, vaccination saves 2-3 million lives a year (1). It is a form of active immunisation; it means that vaccine is injected into your body to activate and boost your immune response. (Note: passive immunisation is the administration of antibodies -...

Immunology

Innate Immune Memory

Immune memory, the ability to remember previous infections, has always been a discipline of the adaptive immune system, or so we learnt in high school. However, articles that describe immune memory of the innate immune system have appeared more often these...

Immunology

Innate Immune System

Every day, our bodies encounter millions of pathogens. In a single day, humans inhale about 12 million bacteria and viruses (1). In addition to mechanical (e.g. skin or tears) and chemical (e.g. low pH in stomach) barriers, our immune system protects us from...

Immunology

Basic Principles in Immunology

On what principles does the immune system work? My PhD exam and Dr. Dominik Filipp's Innate Immunity lecture at the Faculty of Science, UK (highly recommended) led me to articles on concepts or also called principles in immunology. I was actually familiar with them...

Basic principles in Immunology
Virology

Endogenous Retroviruses

Human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) are short DNA sequences within our genome.  Originally, these sequences were the genetic information of viruses that repeatedly infected our cells (1). Over several million years, thousands to hundreds of thousands of HERV...

Human endogenous retroviruses
Molecular biology

The Central Dogma of Molecular Biology

Compared to other sciences, molecular biology is relatively young. Its "birth" can be associated with the research of Johann Gregor Mendel, who published a study on the inheritance in peas in 1865. The discovery of DNA - called nuclein in 1869 by Friedrich Miescher...

The central dogma of molecular biology