Five Words Beginning With The Letter A In Biology

Welcome back to my new biology series. First, I thought I will include 26 words (A to Z) in my blog post. I have changed my plans. Not 26 words but 5 words.

Today is the day for five words starting with the letter A. Letter A is special as it is the first letter of English alphabet.

Here are the five words with letter A.

1. Abiotic

Abiotic means things that are not living. Non living parts of an environment is referred to as abiotic. So, what are the abiotic factors in our environment, you may ask. Any non living thing in an environment that directly or indirectly affect a living thing is the abiotic factor. For example, temperature, wind, soil, pH, etc.

There are few things that can never be abiotic like soil or our body. Our body has millions of bacteria on it.

2. Allergy

Allergy is something everyone must have heard of. It is so common these days. Allergy is a kind of body’s natural way to react to a foreign object. It is also called allergic disease and a person can be allergic to many things.

Our body has an intricate and powerful system that keeps us away from any kinds of germs. This is our body’s defense mechanism called as immune system. When the immune system in our body finds any substance that it feels is not good for our body, it starts fighting with its and tries to get rid of it.

Same immune responses are seen in allergic diseases. Our body wants to get rid of the bad stuff an so we have the allergic reactions. Its the defense mechanism that we see as symptoms.

3. Allergen

Since we talked about allergies, how can we forget allergens. The substances that cause allergies or allergic reactions are called allergens. Most of the time, these allergens are protein particles that our immune system treats as a foreign object. Common allergens can be found in milk, peanuts (or any nuts), pollen, etc.

4. Antibody

Antibody (plural: antibodies) is produced in our body by immune system to protect us from any unwanted substances that enter our body. Antibodies are also called immunoglobulins and there are five different types of immunoglobulins produced by our body for different foreign objects,

5. Antigen

Antibodies are produced against antigens. What are these antigens? Antigens are the foreign objects that trigger the immune system and a cascade of immune reaction. Sometimes body can also recognize a self cell or a self object as a foreign body and tries to get rid of it. such reactions lead to autoimmune diseases.

These are the five words with the letter A. Coincidentally majority of the words were related to the same system (immune system). The more i I know about immune system the more I get fascinated by this amazing system. I will write about this system sometime later.

I hope you find this post interesting enough to read.

See you in the next one.