Study Questions
Study Guide
Here are some thoughts about studying that should help you to understand immunology better as well as to prepare for exams. Although you should first study your notes, read the relevant sections of the textbook and try to answer questions on your own, working with other people in the class is very likely to help you understand the material better and figure out how to address questions.
1. Outline your notes and write down questions you have about the material.
2. Come to my office hours and/or talk to other people in the class about the material you each find confusing.
3. Explain the experiments or figures in the book that we have discussed in class out loud to yourself or to others in the class.
4. After studying, work through practice questions.
5. Write practice questions and talk to others about the answers. I recommend looking at these examples of practice questions and how I revised them, which also describes how I design my questions.
6. Do all of the above throughout the semester, rather than waiting until a few days before an exam!
Problem Set 1: Posted Mon., Sept. 22
Problem Set 2: Posted Sat., Sept. 27
Student-written study questions: Posted Thurs., Oct. 2
Practice Exam
Note: The last question on the practice exam is about a "single chain antibody." The idea of a single-chain antibody is to have one polypeptide that contains the variable domain of the light chain and the variable domain of the heavy chain of a particular antibody; there's a "linker" in between the two domains that allows them to fold properly to recreate the antigen-binding site of an Fab. To get E coli to express the single-chain antibody, the coding regions for VL and VH (with the coding region for the linker in between) are placed in a plasmid under the control of a T7 promoter, to drive transcription of the chimeric gene. If the plasmid is properly constructed and the single-chain antibody can fold properly, the E coli should make a lovely piece o' antibody that can bind to the right antigen.
Remember not to look at answer keys (that will cover some, but not all, questions) until you have written out full answers to problems. Remember we will have a help session in class the Mon. of the exam and I have office hours this week (31 Sept-3 Oct).
Problem set #3
Problem set #4
Problem set #5
Practice exam #2
Note: This 2005 exam mentions an attenuated vaccine, which we will discuss on Wed.; an attenuated vaccine consists of an organism/virus that can still replicate in a host but that has been altered such that it doesn't cause disease in the host (or only mild symptoms). In addition, some questions address the CMV example we discussed in class this year, which we did not discuss in class in 2005.
Student-written questions #2
Problem set #6
Problem set #7
Note: APCs express a pattern-recognition receptor that binds to mannose.
Practice final
Note: The last question of this final relates to a paper we discussed in 2005 about the circadian rhythm of NK cell activity. With the exception of part c, however, I think we have discussed all concepts important for answering these questions.
Student-written questions #3
Answer keys
Remember not to look at answer keys (that will cover some, but not all, questions) until you have written out full answers to problems. Remember we will have a help session in class next Mon.