What Are Antibodies for Defense?

Antibodies for defense are immunogblobins, specialized proteins which are produced by the body in response to an antigen which may be foreign proteins, viruses or toxins. It is the main role of the human immune system to produce antibodies. They have the ability to combine with the very antigens that instigated their production. Antibodies defend people from illness and disease and this is why they are known as antibodies for defense.

How Antibodies Work

• Antibodies can be likened to watchdogs. They are distinctively shaped molecules which travel around our bloodstream looking for unfamiliar, foreign bacteria or viruses. When the antibodies make contact with these unwelcome molecules, they bind tightly to them and act as a marker alerting other defense mechanisms in the immune system to the threat.

How Antibodies Look

• In order to be able to bind tightly to foreign molecules in the blood stream, antibodies need strong arms. For this reason, they are distinctively shaped, made up of many flexible arms that allow them to grab tightly onto the offending molecule. Every human has millions of different types of antibodies to attach to different molecules.

Numbers of Antibodies

• Humans have more than 100,000,000 different types of antibodies, each able to bind to a different type of molecule. Contrary to what many people think, human bodies do not produce a new antibody each time they 'meet' a new virus, rather the antibodies are made before your body is infected with a bacteria or virus.

Where Antibodies Are Made

• The blood cells that make antibodies are known as lymphocites. Lymphocites make the antibodies by recombining genes in a different way, so each lymphocite makes a slighly different antibody. When a new virus or bacteria enters the body, the appropriate antobodies will bind with its molecules, which signals to the appropriate lymphocite to make more of the relevant antibodies.