I think there is a lot of confusion about what immunity means.
Adaptive immunity, which is what you hope to develop when you’re vaccinated, trains your B cells and T cells to recognize pathogens or other antigens.
Adaptive immunity, which is what you hope to develop when you’re vaccinated, trains your B cells and T cells to recognize pathogens or other antigens.
B cells form responses to proteins “with shape.” This means that the protein, such a virus, will present an outer portion of itself to the B cells. The B cells that bind the most strongly will mature and grow to have even stronger binding. This is through B cell receptors.
B cell receptors get released from the B cell, and become antibodies.
In contrast, T cells sense “digested” and degraded proteins, which are presented to them by infected cells cells, cancerous cells, and diseased cells with abnormal protein sequences. This includes virally infected cells. The shape of the protein doesn’t have to be there.
So, you can think of T cells as sending the make-up of something, and forming an immune response to it. The downside is you need many T cells to be specific to a given thing.
B cells, on the other hand, can send out antibodies to act as little “beacons” that mark the outside of something that doesn’t belong in your body. Then, all of your innate immune cells like macrophages & neutrophils; your antigen presenting cells like NK and dendritic cells; ...
...and even your adaptive immune cells like T cells and other B cells can be recruited to the antibody-tagged pathogen or cell, allowing for killing, destruction, digestion, and enhanced affinity maturation of T cell receptors and B cell receptors (antibodies).
Affinity maturation of T cells and B cells happens through a process known as V(D)J recombination whereby the segments of the receptors / antibodies mutate and reshuffle in the genome, and higher affinity cells divide while lower ones kill themselves (apoptosis).
*sensing, not sending.
