the.com/antibody
a Y-shaped assassin that learns your enemies' faces and never forgets a grudge.
means A protein made by your immune system that recognizes and binds to a specific foreign invader, like a bacterium or virus, marking it for destruction.
from A 19th-century scientific compound, stitched together from Greek 'anti-' (against) and the plain old English 'body' — meaning, literally, a 'body against' something. The term arrived as immunology was being born, when researchers found substances in blood that acted 'against' foreign agents (the 'antigens'). It's a calque on the German 'Antikörper', coined as scientists raced to name the invisible defenders they'd only just learned to see.
- shape
- Built like the letter Y, on purpose.
- variety
- Body makes billions of different unique types.
- memory
- Remembers past invaders for decades.
- naming
- Drug names ending in -mab are lab-made antibodies.
- speed
- New ones engineered in weeks during pandemics.
monoclonal antibody herceptin — breast cancer drug targeting her2 protein, fda approved 1998