BMEN 515 Lecture Notes - Cytotoxic T Cell, Memory T Cell, Epitope

• School: University of Calgary
• Department: Biomedical Engineering
• Course: BMEN 515
• Professor: William Huddleston

Document Summary

If there is a resistant to hiv and aids, then we can expect that resistance will spread throughout the human population as generations pass. Antibodies and killer t cells recognize hiv and hiv-infected cells by binding to epitopes- short pieces of viral protein displayed on the surface of the virion or the infected cell: these epitopes are encoded in hiv"s genes. Mutations in the genes can change the epitopes and may enable the mutant virion to evade detection by the host"s current arsenal of antibodies and killer t cells. As the infection progresses from the acute phase to the chronic phase, the hiv population has already evolved. Variants easily recognized by the first wave of the immune attack have disappeared; variants less easily recognized persist. Because the immune system never completely curtails hiv"s replication, the hiv population inside a host evolves throughout the chronic phase of infection.