Polly Matzinger facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Polly Matzinger
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| Born | July 21, 1947 La Seyne, France
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| Alma mater | University of California, Irvine (BS) University of California, San Diego (PhD) |
| Known for | Danger model |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Immunology |
| Institutions | National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases |
Polly Celine Eveline Matzinger (born July 21, 1947) is a scientist who studies the immune system. She was born in France and is famous for creating a new idea called the danger model. This model helps us understand how our body's defense system works.
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Early Life and Education
Polly Matzinger was born in France on July 21, 1947. Her mother was French, and her father was Dutch. In 1954, she moved to the U.S. with her family. Before becoming a scientist, Polly had many different jobs. She was a jazz musician, a carpenter, a dog trainer, and a waitress.
She went to the University of California, Irvine and earned her science degree in biology in 1976. Then, she got her doctorate degree in biology from the University of California, San Diego in 1979. After her studies, she worked as a researcher at the University of Cambridge and the Basel Institute for Immunology. Later, she joined the National Institutes of Health in Maryland.
The "Ghost Lab"
Polly Matzinger leads a special section at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). This lab is sometimes called the "Ghost Lab." This is because Polly chose to work alone for the first nine months. She wanted to focus deeply on her research, especially on something called chaos theory.
In 2015, Polly Matzinger created a series of eight videos. These videos explained her danger model of the immune system. They covered important topics like how our body reacts to organ transplants, tumors, and autoimmunity (when the immune system attacks itself).
Understanding the Immune System
The Danger Model
For a long time, scientists thought the immune system worked by telling the difference between "self" (our own body parts) and "non-self" (things that don't belong, like germs). This was called the Self/Non-self Model. But in the late 1980s, scientists started to find problems with this idea. They realized that immune cells, called T cells, needed help from other cells to know what to do.
Another scientist, Charles Janeway, suggested in 1989 that our body's first line of defense, called the innate immune system, was the real decision-maker. He thought it recognized germs by their unchanging features.
What Are Danger Signals?
In 1994, Polly Matzinger introduced her new idea: the danger model. She said that the immune system doesn't just react to things that are "non-self" or to specific germ patterns. Instead, it reacts to "danger signals." These signals are released when cells in our body are injured or stressed and die in an uncontrolled way.
Think of it like an alarm. When cells are damaged, they send out these alarm signals. These signals tell the immune system that there's a problem and it needs to act. Polly argued that the immune system responds not because something is "foreign," but because there's actual damage or danger.
How Broad is the Danger Model?
The danger model is a very wide-ranging idea. It helps explain many different things, such as:
- Why our body might reject an organ transplant.
- How a mother's immune system doesn't attack her baby during pregnancy.
- Why autoimmune diseases happen.
- How our body fights cancer.
- How vaccines work.
Polly Matzinger believed that older models couldn't explain why immune responses change depending on where the threat is or how serious it is. They also struggled to explain why the immune system sometimes attacks tumors or causes allergies.
New Ideas About Immune Responses
Polly Matzinger and another scientist, Seung-Yong Seong, have suggested that certain parts of damaged cells can act as danger signals. When cells are stressed, their proteins can fold incorrectly. These misfolded proteins can then send out signals that alert the immune system.
In 2013, Polly Matzinger wrote an article where she emphasized a key idea from her danger model: that the different tissues and organs in our body actually guide immune responses. She also thinks that the tiny living things (microbes) that live in and on our bodies might play a big role in how our immune system reacts.
Challenges to the Danger Model
Like all new scientific ideas, the danger model has faced some questions.
- One point of discussion is about regulatory T cells. These cells can stop immune responses. Polly Matzinger has included these cells in her model, saying their control isn't absolute. For example, transplanted organs are rejected more often if they are infected, showing that danger signals still matter.
- Another question is about tumors. The danger model suggested that tumors might grow because their cells die in a controlled way, so they don't send out danger signals. However, recent research shows that the immune system can detect and destroy some tumors.
- The model explains transplant rejection as a result of damage from surgery. But it doesn't fully explain why moving tissue from one part of the body to another (autotransplantation) is usually more successful.
Even with these discussions, terms created by Polly Matzinger, like "danger signal" and "DAMPs" (Damage-Associated Molecular Patterns), are now often used by many scientists.
The Dog Co-Author Story
In 1978, Polly Matzinger published a scientific paper. She listed her Afghan Hound dog, Galadriel Mirkwood, as a co-author! She did this so she could write the paper using "we" and "our" instead of "I" and "my." When the journal editors found out, they were not happy and banned her from publishing with them for a while.
Awards and Recognition
Polly Matzinger has received many honors for her work:
- In 1986, she won an award for her educational film Immunity: The Inside Story.
- In 1996, she became an honorary member of the Scandinavian Society of Immunology.
- In 2002, Discover magazine named her one of the fifty most important women in science.
- In 2003, she received an honorary doctorate degree from Hasselt University.
- In 2008, she was recognized as a "Highly Cited" researcher, meaning her work is often referenced by other scientists.
Since 2009, a company called EpiVax has funded the Polly Matzinger Fearless Scientist Scholarship. This scholarship helps women scientists at the University of Rhode Island who have overcome challenges in their studies.
Films Featuring Her Work
Polly Matzinger has been involved in several films that explain the immune system and her danger model:
- Immunity: the inside story (1986): An animated film explaining how our body fights off the flu.
- A quick look at tissue rejection (1991): An animated film showing why skin grafts might be rejected.
- Death by Design/The Life and Times of Life and Times (1995): A film about cell death that features her work.
- Turned on by Danger (1997): A BBC Horizon program that focuses on and explains the danger model.
- Microbe Invasion (2001): A program about the relationship between humans and the tiny organisms living inside them, featuring the danger model.
