Memory-cell
noun, Immunology.
1.
any small, long-lived lymphocyte that has previously encountered a given antigen and that on reexposure to the same antigen rapidly initiates the immune response (memory T cell) or proliferates and produces large amounts of specific antibody (memory B cell) the agent of lasting immunity.
A cell in the immune system that, when exposed to an invading pathogen, replicates itself and remains in the lymph nodes searching for the same antigen, resulting in a more efficient and rapid response to any subsequent attack.
Note: The creation of memory cells is one of the main goals of vaccination.
Read Also:
- Memory engram
memory engram n. An engram.
- Memory farts
jargon, humour The flatulent sounds that some MS-DOS box BIOSes (most notably AMI’s) make when checking memory at boot time. [Jargon File] (1994-11-02)
- Memory hole
noun a piece of one’s memory that seems to be missing; also, a place where lost memories seem to go Word Origin modeled upon black hole
- Memory-lane
noun 1. the memory of one’s past life likened to a road down which one may travel: The class reunion was a trip down memory lane.
- Memory leak
programming A leak in a program’s dynamic store allocation logic that causes it to fail to reclaim memory in the heap after it has finished using it, eventually causing the program to fail due to lack of memory. These problems were severe on older machines with small, fixed-size address spaces, and special “leak detection” tools […]