BIOL 363: Topic Study Guide – Tolerance and Autoimmunity
This guide encompasses material covered between the second and third in-class exams, as
well as suggestions for study activities that you may find useful. It is intended to help you
focus on the most important topics, but is not comprehensive. Some material may be on the
test that isn’t directly referred to here. Likewise, not everything in this study guide will be on
the test.
I suggest using this study guide to diagnose the areas that you understand well and the
areas where you need more help, rather than exhaustively going through and answering
every question. If you can quickly and completely answer a set of questions, you probably
don’t need to study that area much. If you cannot, it is something you will probably want to go
over more and ask questions about. For these reasons, it is a good idea to take a first pass
through this study guide without your textbook, notes or slides. Working with another student
is also a good idea. Please let me know if you have questions about anything we have
covered in class so far.
Important terms*
*- Suggestions for using these terms:
1) Try going through the list and writing out as full a description as you can for each term
without using the slides, the textbook or your notes.
2) Check the slides and your notes, supplemented by the textbook, to see if you missed
anything.
3) Make flashcards for all those terms you are unfamiliar with.
4) Connect some or all of the terms from each week with a ‘concept map’. If you had to
use some, but not all of the terms from one week, which ones are the most closely
related to each other?
5) Study with another person; explain things to each other.
6) Write down questions about things you are not sure about. Ask them in class or via
email.
Topic – Tolerance and autoimmunity: Central tolerance, peripheral tolerance, anergy,
CTLA-4 versus CD28, organ-specific autoimmune diseases, systemic autoimmune diseases,
AIRE, antigen sequestration/segregation, immune privileged sites, bystander activation,
molecular mimicry, regulatory T cells (Tregs), activation induced cell death (by apoptosis)
Concepts and Questions
Topic – Tolerance and autoimmunity:
▪ Why might an autoimmune disease manifest as only specific against one particular organ
or cell type? Why might another autoimmune disease present with systemic symptoms?
▪ Autoimmune diseases require reaction against self-antigen. Why would T cells versus B
cells be stimulated to become self-reactive in different ways? When either T or B cells
become activated in an autoreactive way, how could the resulting symptoms differ?
▪ Myasthenia gravis develops when auto-antibodies bind to and block the Acetylcholine
receptors (AChR) found at the neuromuscular junction and prevent motor neurons from
inducing skeletal muscles to contract (See Kuby Immunology figure 16-6). This results in
muscle weakening and partial paralysis. How might you try to (immunologically) treat this
kind of autoimmune disease?
▪ What is a way that we have already seen this semester by which ‘central tolerance’ is
induced?
▪ How does a regulatory T cell differ from a standard CD4+ Thelper or CD8+ Tcytotoxic cell? How
can it directly induce its effects on other T cells? How can it indirectly act on other T cells by
modifying the function of professional APCs?
▪ For each of two major hypotheses about how autoimmunity may be triggered (tissue
damage/release of sequestered or privileged antigen, and molecular mimicry), answer the
following questions:
o What changes might occur that cause a person to go from not being self-reactive to
having activated self-reactive T or B cells?
o Why wouldn’t the typical pathways of lymphocyte development protect from the
onset of self-reactivity?