
Ruslan Medzhitov and discovery of Toll-like receptors; Nobel Prize ignored him - NN88
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjSQJ6RpLdk
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Thanks for sharing the video. Very interesting. If the whole thing is too long
to watch suggest to start 17:30.

Here is my layman interpretation (disclaimer: I am not by any means
knowledgeable in biology, and just wikepidyed most of the terms used):

1) our immune system has T cells that are responsible for recognizing if an
antigen is 'foreign' molecule/substance or something that's generated by our
own body (self).

These types of T-cells are called 'Regulatory T-Cells' [1]

2) Cancers, as an example, trick these types of cells to think that the
cancerous cells are 'self'

3) For these type of regulatory T-Cells (T-regs) to get activated, they need 2
signals:

-a- signal that says -- here is a pathogen

-b- signal that says -- this pathogen is foreign (if not, immune system will not get activated).

Toll-like receptors help with -b-.

They work, in a way (this is my analogy, sorry if it is lame), like RegEx
(regular expression), that have evolutionary encoded patterns that indicate
the origin of a given antigen. And that's the core of Ruslan Medzhitov's
research

4) So if we get the regex match of the antigen structure (which is being
sliced 'prepped up' for the check, by slicing its proteins into peptides) --
the signal 2 is generated, and immune system will activate.

If the match did not happen -- no activation.

5) Another interesting thing, (or may be I misunderstood) Is that those TReg
cells, each do not have 'all the patterns'. Instead, our body generates,
randomly, many of those cells, and each one just have one of those 'RegEx'. So
another key, is that our body has to, in parallel, so to speak, apply multiple
of them to the foreign body. And so some of those TReg cells would never get
activated (as they did not have the pattern to induce the -b- signal). But
others, hopefully, would get the match and the -b- signal will happen, and
immune system will get activated.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_T_cell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_T_cell)

