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White blood cells.


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Phagocytes are one lineage of white blood cells, and lymphocytes are the other, like two sides of a family tree. The begining of the tree is a bone marrow stem cell. These can produce daughter cells that are either myeloid precursors, which go on to form the phagocytes, or lymphoid precursors, which go on to form lymphocytes.

 

Phagocytes are cells that eat other things, they include mast cells, monocytes, macropgahes and polymorphonuclear leukocytes. They are involved in both the innate immune system, where they simply eat anything that's bad, and in the aquired immune system, where they can function as antigen presenting cells.

 

Lymphocytes are the main part of the aquired immune system, they include the T and B cells, named after the Thymus and Bone, where they mature, and Natural Killer (NK) cells. There are different types of T cells, which are all able to recognise foreign antigens, T-cytotoxic destroy cells that display forign antigens on their surface, T-helper cells activate B cells when they recognise a foreign antigen from an antigen presenting cell. B cells then either form a plasma cell, which releases antibodies that bind to the antigen and signal for its destruction by the T-cytotoxic cells, or a memory cell, which allow a fast response to the same antigen if it is encountered again. NK cells destroy any cell that doesn't have certain proteins on its surface.

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