• The Antibody

     First off, a vital concept is the antibody!  This guy is a like a warrior in the human body army which is the immune system.  This “army” is in constant warfare will all foreign particles which may penetrate the body.

Now...there is more than one type of warrior.  Each one seeks to destroy a specific foreign invader.  The warriors can only become specialized after training to combat that particular antigen.  Before the antibodies train they are fairly weak and are called germ line cells.  After they are completely mature, however, they are 30,000 times stronger!!! Wowser!  The whole point of the scientific article is to pinpoint how the warriors (antibodies) are trained (how they change from the weak immature form to the strong mature form).

     Like we said earlier, the article is looking at how the antibody changes from one form to the other.  One way this was examined was through X-ray crystallography.  What is that?  It sounds rather complicated...

• X-ray Crystallography

     Imagine that you were in a dark room (spooky) with all the lights off and there was an object in front of you.

 You had no idea what it looked like but you had about a million ping pong balls.  You could throw the balls at different places on the object and then see where the balls bounced off of it.  It would be difficult, but from the information about the trajectory of the balls and where they bounced off, it would be possible to figure out the structure of the object.  This is basically how X-ray crystallography works except it uses x-rays instead of balls!  Neat, huh?

• More about Antibodies

     The “structural insights” from this article says that when the antibodies are immature they are all very different.  They are useful in that they can attack many types of foreign particles but in this state they cannot attack the antigens as strongly.  This is because they are less specific.  The mature forms are more specific.

All antibodies have different shapes and different projections on their surfaces where antigens can bind .  These can be thought of as crab claws.   With these “claws” the antibody can trap a foreign molecule and destroy it with the help of other cells.  The claws on immature antibodies are flexible and they can trap many kinds of invaders whereas those on the mature antibodies are more rigid.  The mature antibodies can grasp more tightly, however, they are limited to attacking only one type of invader.

That was pretty easy then, huh?  That’s the main gist of the article.  You now understand most of what that goofy-titled article is about!  You smarty-pants!  If that was child’s play and you are ready to attain a better understanding of the concepts, a more detailed explanation of the article can be found throughout the rest of this website.