Since your immune system creates an infinite amount of cells, it also creates cells that can kill your own cells. Your thymus is crucial for identifying identification.Your thymus contains a sample of every possible cell in your body, and the immune system tests its weapons there to make sure they don't react to any bodily cell. A small University where your immune cells either pass with flying colors, or get killed.Pretty grim if you ask me, but essential to our continued existence. And there you have the largest, self assembling library that will ever exist. An all powerful system, that lets <warningtag>us exist</warningtag>

The Thymus

In order to create such a vast library of solutions for every possible disease that could exist, your immune system does something extraordinarily brute force yet elegant.It has a small number of gene fragments , each granting the cell the ability to identify a specific type of protein that could show up on a bacterium/virus.The immune system then mixes and matches these gene fragments randomly. Basically shuffling the deck over and over again.Once that's done, it's then taken to the Thymus , where the cell created is tested to make sure it cannot harm any of your own cells.

How Can It Do That? 

Have you ever wondered how our body can recover from almost every disease in existence? Granted we do have the largest medical library in existence, but most drugs help/assist in our recovery.An analogy would be how tanks could change the fate of a war, but they'd be irrelevant if there weren't any soldiers to man them.In order to combat a disease, our immune system need to know it's weaknesses before it can multiply enough in our body to kill us.That'd be equivalent to you unearthing a complex bomb in your garden, and you defusing it before it's timer of 2 seconds runs out.

Elegance Of The Immune System

For every possible antigen that is possible in the universe, you have the potential to recognize it inside you right now

A bacterium inside you can multiple and mutate over generations in the time it takes for you to finish a cup of warm tea for that sore throat.So how do you counter a weapon that itself adapts multiple times?That's where our Adaptive Immune System comes in. It has a weapon for every single enemy that has existed, exists and will ever exist

So How Does The Immune System Do It?

In awe of how amazingly complex our immune system is, and how it functions on a cellular level.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A gorgeously illustrated deep dive into the immune system that will forever change how you think about your body, from the creator of the popular science YouTube channel Kurzgesagt—In a Nutshell “Through wonderful analogies and a genius for clarifying complex ideas, Immune is a truly brilliant introduction to the human body’s vast system for fighting infections and other threats.”—John Green, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars You wake up and feel a tickle in your throat. Your head hurts. You’re mildly annoyed as you get the kids ready for school and dress for work yourself. Meanwhile, an epic war is being fought, just below your skin. Millions are fighting and dying for you to be able to complain as you head out the door. But most of us never really stop to ask: What even is our immune system? Second only to the human brain in its complexity, it is one of the oldest and most critical facets of life on Earth. Without it, you would die within days. In Immune, Philipp Dettmer, the brains behind the most popular science channel on YouTube, takes readers on a journey through the fortress of the human body and its defenses. There is a constant battle of staggering scale raging within us, full of stories of invasion, strategy, defeat, and noble self-sacrifice. In fact, in the time you’ve been reading this, your immune system has probably identified and eradicated a cancer cell that started to grow in your body. Each chapter delves into an element of the immune system, including defenses like antibodies and inflammation as well as threats like bacteria, allergies, and cancer, as Dettmer reveals why boosting your immune system is actually nonsense, how parasites sneak their way past your body’s defenses, how viruses work, and what goes on in your wounds when you cut yourself. Enlivened by engaging full-color graphics and immersive descriptions, Immune turns one of the most intricate, interconnected, and confusing subjects—immunology—into a gripping adventure through an astonishing alien landscape. Immune is a vital and remarkably fun crash course in what is arguably, and increasingly, the most important system in the body.

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A gorgeously illustrated deep dive into the immune system that will forever change how you think about your body, from the creator of the popular science YouTube channel Kurzgesagt—In a Nutshell   “Through wonderful analogies and a genius for clarifying complex ideas, Immune is a truly brilliant introduction to the human body’s vast system for fighting infections and other threats.”—John Green, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars You wake up and feel a tickle in your throat. Your head hurts. You’re mildly annoyed as you get the kids ready for school and dress for work yourself. Meanwhile, an epic war is being fought, just below your skin. Millions are fighting and dying for you to be able to complain as you head out the door.    But most of us never really stop to ask: What even is our immune system? Second only to the human brain in its complexity, it is one of the oldest and most critical facets of life on Earth. Without it, you would die within days. In Immune, Philipp Dettmer, the brains behind the most popular science channel on YouTube, takes readers on a journey through the fortress of the human body and its defenses. There is a constant battle of staggering scale raging within us, full of stories of invasion, strategy, defeat, and noble self-sacrifice. In fact, in the time you’ve been reading this, your immune system has probably identified and eradicated a cancer cell that started to grow in your body. Each chapter delves into an element of the immune system, including defenses like antibodies and inflammation as well as threats like bacteria, allergies, and cancer, as Dettmer reveals why boosting your immune system is actually nonsense, how parasites sneak their way past your body’s defenses, how viruses work, and what goes on in your wounds when you cut yourself. Enlivened by engaging full-color graphics and immersive descriptions, Immune turns one of the most intricate, interconnected, and confusing subjects—immunology—into a gripping adventure through an astonishing alien landscape. Immune is a vital and remarkably fun crash course in what is arguably, and increasingly, the most important system in the body.

PHILIPP DETTMER

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