Lock And Key
A Podcast Of Unnecessary Detail
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How to Make Different Types of Immune Cells
The human genome is made of around 25,000 genes. So how do we make all these different varieties? And this is brilliant. When immune cells are being manufactured in the body, there's a little bit of our DNA, a section that our body can use as a kind of pick and mix. The challenge, though, is when you're recombining bits of DNA like this to produce novel proteins for detecting pathogenic proteins, you might end up producing proteins that detect stuff that your body produces - things that aren't pathogens. If those new immune cells were set loose in your body, they would latch onto your own cells,. They would be activated, and your immune system would produce a
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