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Rice University

Fundamentals of Immunology: Innate Immunity and B-Cell Function

Course 1 of a four course specialization called Fundamentals of Immunology: Innate Immunity and B-cell Function. Each course in the specialization presents material that builds on the previous course's material. This is the first leg of a four-part journey through the defenses your body uses to keep you healthy. In this part, we hope to give you the vocabulary and concepts you need to interact with the medical community and provide them with a context that makes them memorable. Fundamentals of Immunology: Innate Immunity and B-cell Function introduces students to the basic functions of the adaptive and innate immune systems. The early lectures survey cells, tissues, and organs using metaphors, cartoons, and models to improve understanding and retention. After describing the form, function, origin, and varieties of antibodies, subsequent lectures provide details on the mechanism of the generation of variation. The course provides animations of gene rearrangement and class switching and descriptions of affinity maturation correlated with detailed physical models of antibody structure. The final lecture reviews these concepts in an anatomical context. Testing employs multiple choice questions testing facts, concepts, and application of principles. Questions may refer to diagrams, drawings, and photographs used in the lecture and reproduced in the outline. What You’ll Learn: The difference between adaptive and innate immune systems, the characteristics of various pathogens that they protect you from, and the overall strategies employed in this protection. The detailed structure of antibodies and related immunoglobulin receptors, the characteristics and function of the different antibody classes, and the mechanism for producing both the recognition regions and stem regions.  Finally, how these structures are coded for in the DNA and expressed in the B cells.

Status: Microbiology
Status: Molecular Biology
IntermediateCourse34 hours

Featured reviews

MM

5.0Reviewed Jun 9, 2020

The way of teaching and the way of conducting tests are excellent. I was not much interested in immunology until I start this course but now I started loving the subject.

ZF

5.0Reviewed Mar 27, 2020

I'm a Biology student, It's an amazing professor, excellent explanation with clarity the question, Highly recommend, If you have interest do join now, I'm going to the second course.

KP

4.0Reviewed Aug 25, 2020

thoroughly enjoyed it. the instructor is amazing and saved my life as my teachers weren't able to teach this subject in a manner i could understand will now go on to complete the other two

DA

5.0Reviewed Mar 14, 2021

I love this instructor! she explains things so well with touch of personality that, for me, made the information more fun to compartmentalize and absorb for the long term.

HD

5.0Reviewed Dec 13, 2019

This course is an amazing introduction to immunology. It really helps to understand the basic concepts and helps to alleviate the theories and understand them better.

SS

5.0Reviewed Mar 31, 2020

Professor Novotny is one of the best teachers I have seen, she has such a good sense of humor and she makes learning fun and easy....and I love the owl T-Shirts she wears! 8-)

VL

5.0Reviewed Aug 7, 2020

Actually I'm the person who hate immunology because of lot of complications and terminologies involved. But this course helped me to clear those concepts and learn immunology in a better way.

BJ

5.0Reviewed Dec 10, 2020

This course is highly recommended as it opens the innate conceptualization of the fundamentals of Immunology. Excellent delivery from the Rice University management team,

OZ

5.0Reviewed Feb 18, 2020

The course presents with excellent step-by-step detailed explanation of immunity from the systems biology perspective: starting on organism level and going down to the cell and mollecular levels.

IS

5.0Reviewed Mar 29, 2020

This is an amazing course where all scientific materials presented in a very interesting, engaging and easily comprehensive way be the brilliant Professor A. M. Novotny

BR

5.0Reviewed Nov 22, 2020

Thank you very much Professor! I really enjoyed your lessons and passion for teaching. I am glad you are able to share your talent with the world via this medium. Looking forward to the next class!

LK

5.0Reviewed Nov 30, 2020

Dr. Novotny is an absolute master of creating cohesive, intuitively structured and enjoyable lectures. This course is a wonderful learning opportunity and I fully recommend!

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