Process
Innate immunity
The fast, built-in first line of defense. Toll-like receptors recognize features shared by many microbes.
Immune system
The cells, tissues and molecules that defend the body against infection.Source: Janeway CA Jr et al., 2001Source: OpenStax, 2022
Structure
How Immune system connects
Immune system contains
Process
Adaptive immunity
Slower, highly specific defenses carried out by B and T cells, which remember infections they have met before.
Immune system is related to
Organism or group
Virus
Nucleic acid in a protein coat. A virus cannot copy itself alone: it must infect a cell and use the cell's machinery.
Studied in
Your progress
Sources & further reading
The explanations on this page are our own summaries of these sources. Follow a link to read the original; if anything here disagrees with it, the original wins. How we choose and check sources.
Immunobiology: The Immune System in Health and Disease (5th edition) (opens the original in a new tab)
Janeway CA Jr, Travers P, Walport M, et al. (2001). Garland Science.
Free to read on NCBI Bookshelf.
TextbookEducationalAnatomy and Physiology 2e (opens the original in a new tab)
OpenStax (2022). OpenStax, Rice University.
TextbookEducationalLicence: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (linked, not reused)