Sunday, June 16, 2024

KARY MULLIS: The immune system's just a whole bunch of hungry cells, basically, that are not allowed to eat anything they find. They're only allowed to eat it if it's got a bunch of antibodies on it

Kary Mullis speaking at a Google Fireside Chat in 2010: "[T]he immune system deals with viruses...it deals with things like, say, influenza—when it causes your cells to start making influenza viruses—it puts a lot of things on the surfaces of those cells that wouldn't normally be there, that the virus wants to put there, because it makes it easier for it to do its stuff inside the cell. That's what you use as a target." "You say any cell that's been co-opted by influenza is going to have these little things called M2e, which is a little target that we can simulate with like a nonapeptide. So...because it makes these little holes in cells and...in order to do that, it has to put some of its proteins on there. And they're therefore susceptible to the immune system. So we just redirect an immunity to eat those cells." "The immune system's just a whole bunch of hungry cells, basically, that are not allowed to eat anything they find. They're only allowed to eat it if it's got a bunch of antibodies on it—that means this is for eating purposes here . . . so that keeps them from eating other things."

"So we put those antibodies on there because we found out from the chemists what the flu puts on there, what's different about those cells now. So you don't actually kill the virus itself, you actually kill the cells that make the virus." 

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