Constructing Vaccination

As we’ve learned in our microbiology class, a vaccination is the most effective method of controlling infectious diseases. Vaccination prevents people from serious and even fatal diseases such as diphtheria, Hepatitis A and B, measles, chickenpox, and many others.
This short animation I chose to watch briefly explains the types of vaccines and their functions.
There are different ways to produce the vaccines, but usually vaccine consists of weakened or killed pathogens that stimulate immune response.
The first type of vaccines is attenuated vaccines – contain live but weakened microbes. Trough the process called attenuation, the pathogen loses its virulence but still has enough antigens to elicit the immune system.
The second type is inactivated vaccines and one of them is subunit vaccines. Subunit vaccines contain fragments of antigens instead of whole microorganism.
Recombinant vaccines are produced by cloning the gene of desired antigen.
In this animation wasn’t discussed one more type of vaccines which is toxoid vaccines. Toxoid vaccines are modified toxins (treated with heat or chemicals), that are used in vaccines to stimulate the body to produce protective immunity. Examples of toxoid vaccines are diphtheria and tetanus vaccines.
I realy apriciate that I had a chance to learn about role and importance of vaccination. These days people have different concerns about safty of vaccination so the information I've learnd realy helps me to be confident about its usage. http://www.1lecture.com/Immunology/Vaccine/index.html

Cell Mediated And Humoral Immunity

In this animation it is shown how white blood cells called macrophages lead the body's cell mediated response by coming into contact and digesting born invaders and also how macrophages build antigens on its surface. It describes what happens when another white blood cell called a helper T - cell encounters the macrophage. If the helper T- cell has a matching receptor to the macrophage then it will bind to the macrophage's surface. It also go into how the helper T- cells multiply and secrete chemicals to help with the response against the invaders. This animation also explains a little about humoral immunity as well and how in humoral immunity B - cells produce the antibodies. It goes into how the B - cells reproduce and what kind of cells they produce into. In general this animation decribes how these two types of immunity respond and what is involved in both responses. This relates to biol 440 because we have discussed both types of immunity as well as T- cells and B- cells.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tBOmG0QMbA&feature=player_embedded