Biology/Immunology Help

[unpaired e]

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so i basically suck at bio & was wondering if someone who was fortunate enough to have the gift of bio help me out with this problem:

Jane and her identical twin Lane received injections of a small viral protein (SVP) at the same time to immunize them against Virus-L that infects liver cells, and they both received booster shots of SVP 2 months later. A month after the booster shot they were subjected to identical exposures to Virus-L. Jane showed no signs of infection, while Lane developed a serious Virus-L infection that required anti-viral drugs to successfully treat. Among more than 5 million other children of about the same age who received similar immunizations, and who were predicted to have had infectious exposures to Virus-L, only 5 developed serious Virus-L infections.

Provide a reasonable explanation for the different response of the two identical twins. Your answer should describe the various immunological reasons why Jane did not become infected, as well as why Lane did become infected.

any help would be GREATLY appreciated. i am close to failing this class. lol 🙁

 

[cystapharm]

I have a feeling this thread will close down because I've seen it happen b4 as this is not a place to ask HW questions.

If you're lucky someone will answer you come tomorrow morning. 🙂

 

[unpaired e]

dang really? i thought this was the perfect place to ask for help. & it would be okay. lol. that makes me sad 🙁

 

[Knickerbocker]

dang really? i thought this was the perfect place to ask for help. & it would be okay. lol. that makes me sad 🙁

If they allowed such questions, tons of people would come out of nowhere to flood this board with their homework.

 

[tootoo30]

Hey try Yahoo Answers where students help other students with homework. They don't give you the answer but they can guide you in the right direction. Has worked for me many times during Chemistry when I got stuck.

HTH

 

[Street Spirit]

The only thing I can really think of right now is that there was a variance in the way the viral protein was digested among the twins.

I don't know how much background you have on the matter, so I'll go into a little detail in "lay" terms. When foreign substances enter the body, the immune response usually kicks-in by breaking up the foreign substance into smaller parts, usually peptides. The peptides are then transferred to receptors (MHCII) on T-cells to be presented to B cells, which eventually differentiate to form plasma cells to produce antibodies for the given intruder as well as produce memory B-cells. This way, infections later on will can be quickly dealt with as the body already knows of the intruder (namely what it looks like) and how to quickly dispose of it.

Since we're dealing with twins, there should not be any genetic variances within their cells and their immunological response, but there may be a difference in how their respective cells process a given viral protein (the SVP vaccine).

It could be that one of the twins only presented peptides (small protein fragments) that were situated within the protein itself, thus there was an immunological response to only those types of antigens. However, when a fully-formed virus is present then, only it's surface proteins would be detected as antigens to illicit an immunological response. If the body is prepped for only interior antigens, no quick and immediate response would occur that would protect the body from infection.

In a similar vein, there may have been a difference within the SVP vaccine itself.

I'm not too sure about this, as Immunology was quite awhile ago...this is only a possibility that may have happened. Usually with questions like this, they want you to relate it to something you have recently learned to explain this phenomena. Hope this helps.

 

[Elvin]

You could also just put something simple like viruses are notoriously famous to have lots of mutations because of a lack of proofreading by their polymerases, so it is possible that one of the identical twins got the same virus but it had a mutation that altered some of the surface proteins and therefore the antibodies that the immune system had built up from the booster shots were not able to recognize the mutated virus. Probably not the case, but maybe a simple answer like that will due.

 

[bsmspharmd]

The key component of this question is the fact that the two children are identical twins. The teacher is trying to emphasize that the children have identical genes, except for, *hint hint* genes that are modified randomly during the maturation of certain immune cells.

Ask yourself what kinds of cells fight off viral infections, and what kinds *big hint* receptors that these cells use.

Hope that helps.