Biology is designed for multi-semester biology courses for science majors. It is grounded on an evolutionary basis and includes exciting features that highlight careers in the biological sciences and everyday applications of the concepts at hand. To meet the needs of today’s instructors and students, some content has been strategically condensed while maintaining the overall scope and coverage of traditional texts for this course. Instructors can customize the book, adapting it to the approach that works best in their classroom. Biology also includes an innovative art program that incorporates critical thinking and clicker questions to help students understand—and apply—key concepts.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:Describe physical and chemical immune barriersExplain immediate and induced innate immune responsesDiscuss natural killer cellsDescribe major histocompatibility class I moleculesSummarize how the proteins in a complement system function to destroy extracellular pathogens

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"There is a reciprocal relationship between the gut microbiome and its host. The microbiome influences host health and survival, while host traits shape the microbial community structure. One of the ways the host is thought to influence the microbiome is through the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). The MHC is a collection of variable genes that play key roles in host immunity. However, few studies have examined wild animal populations for links between the MHC and microbiome. To close this gap, researchers examined the MHC genotypes and gut microbial communities of wild Seychelles warblers (_Acrocephalus sechellensis_). Specific MHC alleles, rather than overall MHC diversity, corresponded to differences in the diversity and composition of the microbiota and MHC class I alleles had a greater impact on the microbiota than MHC class II alleles. Gut microbiome diversity also increased with whole-genome heterozygosity, which is the proportion of sites in the genome with two different alleles..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Autophagy is a catabolic process in which intracellular components are degraded in lysosomes. Stresses such as nutrient deficiency, hypoxia, and chemotherapy can trigger autophagy, making autophagy relevant to cancer treatment. Autophagy appears to play complex dual roles in cancer immune escape. For example, autophagic degradation of the immune checkpoint protein PD-L1 generally enhances T cell activation and suppresses tumor growth, but cancer cells can encapsulate PD-L1 and another checkpoint protein, CD47, in endosomes to prevent their degradation. In addition, MHC-I/II autophagy enables cancer cell immune escape and inhibits antigen presentation and T cell activation. However, autophagic mitochondrial degradation, termed mitophagy, can improve the antitumor immune response. Therefore, autophagy can positively or negatively affect cancer immune escape, which may depend on the experimental context, and autophagy may synergize with immune cells to regulate cancer immune surveillance..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.