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White blood cells

When antibodies lock onto antigens, does this immediately kill the invading cell, or does something else happen?

This doesn't immediately kill the cell, no. There are a lot of different actions involved in destroying invading cells, but the main function of an antibody is marking the cell as foreign so that other parts of the immune system can destroy it (e.g. phagocytes engulf it through phagocytosis). Antibodies also act like a glue (this is because each antibody can bind to 2 different pathogens), sticking the invading objects together so that it becomes difficult for them to move or infect cells (the technical term for this is agglutination). This helps phagocytes to engulf a whole group of them at once, as they are all together and unable to move away.

I'm not sure how much of this you need to know for GCSE biology, as I took the old spec in 2015, but the facts themselves are not going to change.

Reply 2

username1402543

Original post by humayun.h

When antibodies lock onto antigens, does this immediately kill the invading cell, or does something else happen?

White blood cells can ingest pathogens and destroy then produce antibodies to destroy particular pathogens produce antitoxins that counteract the toxins released by pathogens.
Also the pathogens are not the disease they cause the disease white blood cells do not eat the pathogens they ingest them antibodies and antitoxins are not living things they are specialised proteins.

Reply 3

Kallisto

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Original post by humayun.h

When antibodies lock onto antigens, does this immediately kill the invading cell, or does something else happen?

As far as I know, an antigen-antibody-reaction enables the phagocytes to localize the invading cells. They are 'eaten' by those phagocytes, the invading cells are killed then. So no, they are not killed immediately. That would happen, if T-killercells are activated.