The Killer Ts

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Here's a video that looks like it came right out of a science fiction movie, but it's not the blob or some other exterrestrial body snatcher. This fight takes place in our body every day--it's the microscopic battlefield of the Killer T Cells.



It's not just doctors and mad scientists who help solve the diseases that afflict us. This video was created by Alex Ritter, a student at the University of Cambridge to show what Killer Ts can do and was recently posted on Open Culture. "The process is shown at 92 times the actual speed. And for a sense of scale, a cytotoxic T cell is only 10 microns in length, or about one-tenth the width of a human hair."

Important? You bet! If we can figure out how these little killers work we can use them to fight disease.

Cytotoxic T cells are very precise and efficient killers. They are able to destroy infected or cancerous cells, without destroying healthy cells surrounding them….By understanding how this works, we can develop ways to control killer cells. This will allow us to find ways to improve cancer therapies, and ameliorate autoimmune diseases caused when killer cells run amok and attack healthy cells in our bodies.

What's your major?