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aychamo
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Continuing with my classes' discussion of the immune system problems, we covered autoimmune diseases today. This posed a few more questions for me that I would like to ask the experts.
1. In apoptosis, are components of the cell that is programmed to die recycled? Or are they excreted from the body?
2. With tissue compatibility, there are two main classes of HLA (human leukocyte antigen) complexes. Class I is HLA-A, HLA-B, HLA-C. Class II is HLA-DR, HLA-DP, HLA-DQ. Do the letters after HLA represent anything? For the class I, my guess would be no. But for class II, I feel confused. I recognize that the R,P,Q that follow the HLA-D format are three letters that are located together in the alphabet, however my book listed them in the order above (DR, DP, DQ), which strikes me as slightly odd, because the alphabetical order of those three letters is PQR. Back-wards would be RQP. Is there any significance?
3. We talked about grafting tissues. With autografts, we read that recent technology has made it possible to use a few cells of a burn patient's uninjured skin to culture extensive sheets of new skin. First, how is this done? How do they grow skin from only a few cells in culture? Where does normal skin come from? I know that normal skin is either keratinized or non-keratinized simple squamous epithelium. Does it originate from the basal membrane? And then perhaps a new skin cell develops beneath the current one and pushes the new ones off? What triggers the body to grow more skin? How reliable is this skin? Is it thick skin? Or just thick enough to cover the burn and then it grows down-wards to attach? Or how does it attach?
4. We also talked about xenografts (organs or tissue transplanted from other animals to humans.) Is there much success/experimentation going on in this? I read about the heart valves from pigs, but beyond that I'm clueless.
5. With radiation (I guess gamma), we learned how it stops rapidly dividing cells from dividing. Does it only stop rapidly dividing cells, or all cells? I see this is how they treat the cancer, because the cancer cells rapidly develop. But we learned the problem with high dosages of radiation (like Chernobyl in the Soviet) is that it kills the bone marrow, which produces WBCs and RBCs. Is this why radiation is so dangerous? Or does it cause other things also, like is it a mutagen as well? Is this the problem the people in Hiroshima had?
Again, I thank any and everyone for reading this :-). I am really enjoying the immune system. I like this, and the parts about WBC, etc. But obviously they fit together, all the same stuff. I really enjoy it. Incidentally, I got accepted into my last-choice med-school yesterday, perhaps this is a field I can pursue in medicine.
(Note: Moderators, masters, doctors: I realize that I am having a very one sided relationship with the forums--that of me pulling out a lot of information but not contributing much. I apologize for this, however I am just very inquisitive and like to learn all I can about the material I find interesting. You guys seem to be very knowledgeable, the experts, regarding this stuff. I hope this format I have taken of asking questions is OK with you guys.)
1. In apoptosis, are components of the cell that is programmed to die recycled? Or are they excreted from the body?
2. With tissue compatibility, there are two main classes of HLA (human leukocyte antigen) complexes. Class I is HLA-A, HLA-B, HLA-C. Class II is HLA-DR, HLA-DP, HLA-DQ. Do the letters after HLA represent anything? For the class I, my guess would be no. But for class II, I feel confused. I recognize that the R,P,Q that follow the HLA-D format are three letters that are located together in the alphabet, however my book listed them in the order above (DR, DP, DQ), which strikes me as slightly odd, because the alphabetical order of those three letters is PQR. Back-wards would be RQP. Is there any significance?
3. We talked about grafting tissues. With autografts, we read that recent technology has made it possible to use a few cells of a burn patient's uninjured skin to culture extensive sheets of new skin. First, how is this done? How do they grow skin from only a few cells in culture? Where does normal skin come from? I know that normal skin is either keratinized or non-keratinized simple squamous epithelium. Does it originate from the basal membrane? And then perhaps a new skin cell develops beneath the current one and pushes the new ones off? What triggers the body to grow more skin? How reliable is this skin? Is it thick skin? Or just thick enough to cover the burn and then it grows down-wards to attach? Or how does it attach?
4. We also talked about xenografts (organs or tissue transplanted from other animals to humans.) Is there much success/experimentation going on in this? I read about the heart valves from pigs, but beyond that I'm clueless.
5. With radiation (I guess gamma), we learned how it stops rapidly dividing cells from dividing. Does it only stop rapidly dividing cells, or all cells? I see this is how they treat the cancer, because the cancer cells rapidly develop. But we learned the problem with high dosages of radiation (like Chernobyl in the Soviet) is that it kills the bone marrow, which produces WBCs and RBCs. Is this why radiation is so dangerous? Or does it cause other things also, like is it a mutagen as well? Is this the problem the people in Hiroshima had?
Again, I thank any and everyone for reading this :-). I am really enjoying the immune system. I like this, and the parts about WBC, etc. But obviously they fit together, all the same stuff. I really enjoy it. Incidentally, I got accepted into my last-choice med-school yesterday, perhaps this is a field I can pursue in medicine.
(Note: Moderators, masters, doctors: I realize that I am having a very one sided relationship with the forums--that of me pulling out a lot of information but not contributing much. I apologize for this, however I am just very inquisitive and like to learn all I can about the material I find interesting. You guys seem to be very knowledgeable, the experts, regarding this stuff. I hope this format I have taken of asking questions is OK with you guys.)