For those who’ve never heard of the Page 100 Project, you can find the details here. I, of course, immediately thought of one of my favorite books, Immunology: Understanding the Immune System by Klaus D. Elgert. Imagine my surprise, though, when I opened to page 100 and found the biological imperative that forms the basis of the beliefs held by the anti-gay marriage crowd. I was shocked to say the least…
Seriously though, I do plan on doing some Page 100s for the fun of it and the drawing practice… Anyone else feel like doing a page?
Gay marriage, polygamy, and let’s not forget incest in their for the aunts… and is that kid watching an ORGY!?!? Child Abuse has to be in there somewhere…
No, no… it’s his Mom’s sister and his Dad’s sister. Only incestual in the Catholic sense. Clearly, though, this has turned out less family-friendly than I normally shoot for… even though they’re just kissing…
I’m not sure engulfing can be classified as “just kissing”…
Oh, and lots of Aunties getting it on counts as a incestuous lesbian orgy in any sense…
Comments often reveal more about the commenter than that which is commented on. There are only the two non-consanguineous aunties. The rest is a community effort.
I actually got a hate email this morning complaining about how I was so against gay marriage. I’m guessing that sarcasm is becoming a lost art…
Sarcasm isn’t. THINKING is.
But sarcasm requires thinking…
Indeed… indeed.
Oh, and antibodies bind… engulfing happens by other things in other places…
To quote my good buddy Klaus:
“The function of the antibody is to combine with the antigen. This combination in vivo may be enough to neutralize toxins and some viruses, but a secondary interaction of the antigen bound antibody with another effector agent, such as complement or phagocytic cells, is usually required for disposal of larger antigens such as bacteria.
I shall point you in the direction of the word, “opsonized”… I felt engulfed would be better digested (not exactly a punn, but a clever play if I do say so myself). And you were the one to reduce antibodies and antigens into Aunts- those would be general aunts if ever there were. And unless you refer to mixed blood reactions, this would, by definition, be consanguin…technically, monosanguin…which might be worse depending upon which hate mailer read it…
See (waaaaaay) below for reply, and we’ve exceeded the levels…
Heh. The immunology nerd in me is thrilled by this 🙂
That’s what I’m here for… to thrill!
Chris, while I am aware of the eventual phagocytosis that the antigen is likely to endure, the fact remains that the antibody itself is not responsible for the engulfment. It just lubricates the process, so to speak.
When I speak of consanguinity, I am looking at an invading bacteria (yes, I know it looks like a raw steak) and an antibody. Neither are sanguine by nature as they have no blood, but neither are the consanguineous as they both have very different genetic backgrounds. Therefore, except in the binding sense (bad pun alert), they can be called non-consanguineous Aunts.
The initial perversion of thought, of course, was entirely mine and not wholly appropriate for a family-friendly site, but what are you going to do?!?
Howdy!
Depends on how you look at it I suppose. From my perspective I look at antibodies coming from different B cells but they are all blood relatives (one blood in fact), differing only in their antigen binding domains (different types of antibodies will of course differ elsewhere, but overall not by much). All bacteria in any infection will be, for all intents and purposes, clones of one another (to add an additional ick factor). Being opsonized, covered, coated, etc. is in fact a form of engulfment in my dictionary. Pour caramel over your body and I’m pretty sure it would be perfectly acceptable to proclaim yourself “engulfed in caramel”…If some caramel lover cares to come along and engulf you in a different way, well, who am I to argue… The real fun comes when the T cells kick in anyway… 🙂
Well, it’s true to say that the various Antibodies are consanguineous as are the bacteria to each other so over all I will concede consanguineity as I was focusing only on the initial pairing… things do get a bit murky during the secondary reaction…
As per the engulfment, the attachment leads to engulfment, so it just depends upon how far afield one focuses.
Yeah, just a matter of application. I say the bacteria are engulfed by antibody, you prefer the engulfing (word) be reserved for the phagocytic stage. 6 for one, half dozen the other… I prefer caramel overall though… yum…
Caramel is good… must find a Milky Way…
Hmmm… now that I think of it, it looks more like a slice of ham that has been dropped on the floor of a cat owner…
What’d y’all say again? Y’all lost me back there somewhere and started gettin’ way over mah head.
Indeed. This strip surprised me a bit in the discussion it generated. I simply thought it was a simple gag relating immunology to the gay marriage leads to polygamy argument… but it went a bit dark… and scientific!