Recent comments in /f/askscience

Apollo506 t1_jcru064 wrote

Reply to How does immunity to larger internal parasites such as worms work? by OryuSatellite

Here is a helpful paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4744952/

Currently on mobile so I'm going to do a really poor job of summarizing it, but essentially:

  1. Mucus membranes help to keep parasites from attaching.

  2. Innate immunity - Macrophages gobble up larvae. Circulating granulocytes (cells that carry toxic granules, think of them as bombers) and pro-inflammatory cytokine molecules make life generally unpleasant.

  3. Adaptive Immunity - The big player is a class of antibody called IgE that is meant to be anti-parasite. Coordination between Helper T's, Killer T's l, IgA/IgE, etc. results in a cascade of events including: increased mucus production, attracting more granulocytes for carpet bombing, flagging parasitic cells for death (i.e. by Killer T's), reinvigorates macrophages to fight harder, etc.

Again this is a really rough summary, if you want to dive deeper I suggest checking out the paper and some of its sources! Hope this helps.

8

OneAndOnlyJoeseki t1_jcrsve8 wrote

Reply to comment by Ravenson420 in What is the motion btwn Milky Way & Andromeda relative to the motion btwn those two and the Great Attractor? by Griegz

That doesn’t sound right, if Andromeda and milky way are heading towards each other, and the great attractor is on the far side of Andromeda. Doesn’t that mean the milky way is headed toward the GA faster than andromeda is. It may be closer but the MW is narrowing that gap

0