We all know the basics of how our immune system works. When a foreign body like a virus is detected, and has been encountered before a series of events take place by our innate immune response that can destroy the virus before we can become sick. Well like in mammals plants and invertebrates have a similar system called RNA interface (RNAi). It has been known that mammals posses the RNAi as well, but it was thought not to be involved in the mammalian immune system. It turns out that is not true. Researchers have discovered that RNAi does in fact play a role in the mammalian immune response. Through their research it was shown that RNAi was important at keeping viruses at bay. My question is, if RNAi was not in the innate immune response would it still work, or would the whole system fall apart without it?
article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131010142754.htm
So RNAi was recently believed to be non-beneficial? Since it was determined that it aided in viral defense, which is an important enough subject that the roll of RNAi in the process wouldn't have been overlooked for this long, I would say it is not necessarily a death sentence if it was lost, but then again I can't say for sure as I am only using the information you brought up in your blog, not the info from the article you linked.
ReplyDeleterole*
DeleteI do not know if the immune system would completely fall apart without RNAi, but it seems to be an important enough factor to cause some severe problems if it stops working.
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