Thymus gland , The T-Cell Academy !

The thymus gland is a very important part of Our immune system 🙂

It is the place where T cells are produced and taught how to do their job efficiently , which is to defend the body against evil pathogens :devil:

Imagine the thymus gland as a School for little T- cells  :whistle: … Just like our toon here :happy:

T cells got their name ” T ” from the word ” Thymus” … as they are born in the Thymus gland .

little baby T cells need to learn a very important thing in order to graduate from the thymus gland and do their job perfectly 🙂

The Thymus gland teaches these young T cells how to recognize harmful substances & pathogens and differentiate between them and our normal body cells

Ok, now  🙂 .. how does the thymus gland teach the T cells to do that :wassat: ?

Lets take a look at the blackboard in our toon :whistle:

MHC : Major Histocombatibility Complex 🙂

it’s a protien complex that is found on the surface of all of our cells .

it’s Just like a fingerprint , Every single person has his own unique MHC ,

the thymus gland make the T-cells memorize our body’s unique MHC … so they can recognize our body cells as Normal cells “ self ” and so they don’t attack our own body tissues .

but , whenever a pathogen or a foreign substance enters our body , T cells can recognize it as a stranger “ Non self ” since it has a strange MHC on it’s surface .

so they mistakenly recognize our body tissues as strangers and attack them … this causes Autoimmune diseases[/tip]

finally , here is a cool vedio that would help if you’re studying MHC in depth 😎

 

more Toons about immunity that could help :happy: :

 Immunity : Phagocytic cells

Memorizing Immunoglobulins ” Types of antibodies ”

 Antibodies ↔ complement system >> the Body cookers !

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References :

– Physiology lectures in our college – Mansoura university – Egypt

additional pics :

– iheartguts.com

– spiderpic.com