Your body is equipped with an immune system that can naturally heal virus-infected cells. In particular, killer T cells play an important role in maintaining your body’s health by finding and directly eliminating virus-infected cells.
The body has a “natural healing” function. What does “natural healing” mean? Natural healing means that we have an immune system that can fight off viruses (antigens) without outside help. It’s one of the survival mechanisms that humans have evolved over the years, and it’s an important defense system that protects and maintains the body from external threats. Without it, we would be at risk from the many pathogens we encounter on a daily basis.
To be more precise, the immune system uses several methods to find and eliminate virus-infected cells. To do this, the immune system relies on the cooperation of many different types of immune cells and proteins to respond quickly. However, among the cells involved in this immune system, there is one that plays a very important role. These are the “killer T cells” that directly seek out and eliminate virus-infected cells. Killer T cells are your body’s sentinels.
Killer T cells are a type of lymphocyte that travels in the blood or lymphatic fluid to patrol the body. In addition to killer T cells, lymphocytes include helper T cells and B cells. When a virus enters the body, helper T cells activate B cells to produce antibodies that destroy the virus. The antibodies produced by B cells play an important role in targeting and quickly eliminating specific viruses or bacteria. Antibodies bind to specific proteins on the surface of the virus and either prevent the virus from entering other cells, or neutralize the virus so that other immune cells in the body can easily eliminate it. These processes illustrate how the immune system responds to infection.
Killer T cells, on the other hand, attack infected cells directly. Killer T cells, on the other hand, go cell by cell, like a police officer on a sobriety checkpoint on the road, looking for virus-infected cells. If a virus-infected cell is detected by a killer T cell, it dies. So how do killer T cells destroy virus-infected cells?
The first thing the immune system activates is the MHC (major histocompatibility gene complex) on the cell surface. MHC is a protein molecule shaped like a crab’s pincer that is responsible for dragging protein fragments from inside the cell to the cell surface. Let’s look at this process in a little more detail. Normally, cells contain mostly self-proteins, but once infected with a virus, viral proteins are made in the cell that weren’t there before. These self and viral proteins are then broken down by proteolytic enzymes into peptide fragments, which float around the cell, bind to MHC, and are delivered to the cell surface. A peptide is an organic substance that is structurally similar to a protein molecule but smaller.
This time, the killer T cell is in action. The killer T cell recognizes the structure of the peptide fragment in combination with the MHC on the outside of the cell through a T cell receptor (TCR) on its surface, which determines whether the cell is infected with the virus. If the MHC-bound peptide is from their own protein, the T cell recognizes the cell they encounter as a normal cell and passes it by. However, if the MHC-bound peptide belongs to a viral protein, the T cell is activated and sends proteins that attack the cell into the infected cell. The T-cell attacked cell soon dies, and the virus inside it is killed as well.
Even now, abnormal cell division and viral infections continue to occur here and there in the body. But as long as your body’s killer T cells are working properly to find and destroy diseased cells, you can stay healthy. The immune system is our body’s guardian, and it’s a great example of how organized our bodies are. It’s not just a mechanical reaction, but part of a complex living system in which many cells and molecules work together to maintain balance and keep you healthy.
