(noun. /MAY-jer /HIS-toe-com-PAT-uh-BIL-ih-tee /COM-plex)
by Taylor Tibbs
What does it mean?
The Major Histocompatibility Complex, commonly referred to as just “MHC”, is a protein structure on the surface of cells that recognizes foreign particles or anything that is not supposed to be in the body. Cells, like macrophages that eat foreign substances and pathogens, will eat a virus or bacteria invading the body and then spit out a little chunk of it on its MHC. Other cells can respond to the chunk on the MHC to develop an immune response to remove it.
How do I use it in a sentence?
“Cells use the MHC to tell the immune system there is a foreign substance that needs to be removed from the body.”
Etymology
The term MHC can be broken down into its three main parts.
“Major” – meaning “primary” or “abundant.”
“Histocompatibility” – refers to the body’s ability to recognize itself from others. This term stems from observations made during early organ transplantation where individuals with different MHC alleles would reject organs from one another – as their cells recognized the organ with different MHC as “other” – but individuals with the same MHC alleles would recognize each other as “self” and therefore not reject their organs.
“Complex” – referring to the multiple protein structures that work together
Related terms
