The Secondary Immune Response

by Greg Crowther

If you are exposed to a pathogen and fight it off, your subsequent responses to the same pathogen are quicker and stronger. This song outlines some of the mechanisms involved. Ideally, it would sound a bit like a mellower version of "September" by Earth, Wind & Fire.

Do you remember
Your last microbial infection?
Your T cells and your B cells sprang to action
When fired up by cytokines.

Yeah, the B cells
Were antibody factories and the T cells
Committed to their roles like T-sub-c cells:
Cytotoxic to enemy lines....

If the invader
Returns to you, the memory B cells
Will do what plasma cells do; like memory T cells,
They're set to fight Round 2.

Do you remember?

• MP3 (demo)

• sheet music

Songs like this one can be used during class meetings and/or in homework assignments. Either way, the song will be most impactful if students DO something with it, as opposed to just listening.

An initial, simple follow-up activity could be to answer the study questions below. A more extensive interaction with the song might entail (A) learning to sing it, using an audio file and/or sheet music as a guide, and/or (B) illustrating it with pictures, bodily poses, and/or bodily movements. The latter activity could begin with students identifying the most important or most challenging content of the song, and deciding how to illustrate that particular content.

(1) To what does the title of this song refer?

(2) Which immune cells are the primary source of cytokines mentioned in the first verse?

(3) What does it mean for a B cell to be an "antibody factory"?