Microbiology and Immunology 2500A/B- Final Exam Guide - Comprehensive Notes for the exam ( 258 pages long!)

• School: Western University
• Department: Microbiology and Immunology
• Course: Microbiology and Immunology 2500A/B
• Professor: Dimitrios J Dikeakos, John Mc Cormick, Kelly Lynn Summers

Document Summary

Introduction lecture: the biology of infection and immunity. To protect us from microorganisms with the potential to cause infectious diseases called pathogenic microorganisms or pathogens. Contact with pathogens is inevitable: 50,000 pathogens in one breath, sea water, 40 million in saliva. Immune system has to decide if something is a threat: use cells and proteins to sense threats, external threat, false responses to non harmful antigens allergic reaction, eg. Internal threat: when a cell incurs damage it will commit cell suicide aka apoptosis. Cancer cells avoid apoptosis and continue to grow: in autoimmune diseases the immune system"s t cells attacks and destroys other cells which is bad. Microorganisms have the advantage of evolving and reproducing extremely quickly: this rapid speed needs to be compensated by the immune system. Infectious diseases remain the leading cause of death worldwide: there has been a major increase in life expectancy from early 1900s, mainly due to control of infectious diseases.