53
votes
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Are the antibodies developed by differing vaccines still the same?
Due to the nature of the immune system, even people who receive the same vaccine will have a different set of antibodies.
Our immune systems generate a vast number of essentially random recognition ...
- 6,977
30
votes
Is antivenom fatal?
1. Synopsis
I'd like to preface this by saying don't randomly use medicines without a doctor's advice. It's fairly unlikely antivenom would cause you any harm but in some cases, antivenom could be ...
- 1,515
12
votes
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Why aren't the antibodies in the mother's milk digested by the infant's digestive system?
Demers-Mathieu et al. 1 used ELISA to quantify immunoglobulin concentrations from milk after 2 hours of digestion in the stomachs of preterm-delivered and term-delivered infants. From the abstract:
...
- 8,256
6
votes
Accepted
Why don't phagocytes eliminate mutualistic foregin organisms residing in our body?
Molecular context is important here. E.coli in your colon is OK with the body, it is taken up by phagocytes as part of normal "surveillance". Your immune system will learn and gain "tolerence" to ...
- 837
6
votes
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How do scientists discover a new antigen and its epitope?
Okay, you have a few questions building on top of each other (rephrased the questions for clarity):
How do scientists discover a new antigen?
There are multiple ways to this, which are applied for ...
- 4,391
6
votes
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How plasma cells switches secreting different Ig classes?
In T-dependent antigen recognition, the B cell can switch the isotype by first altering the heavy chain gene. This is driven by Tfh cells. The specific cytokine stimulating the class switch determines ...
- 8,101
5
votes
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What is A in IgA?
The letter suffix in the name or abbreviation of an immunoglobulin specifies which type of "heavy chain" the immunoglobin contains. The heavy chain is the large polypeptide (amino acid chain) found in ...
- 9,024
5
votes
Accepted
After getting fully vaccinated for HBV why does the antiHBs titer last for so long?
There is such a thing as memory plasma cells, discovered only relatively recently. Here is a review from 2010 discussing them, here is another review from 2012, and here is a pre-publication ...
- 15.2k
5
votes
Where does the number 67 in the nuclear protein/antigen Ki-67 come from? Why not 66 or 68?
From Wikipedia: "The name is derived from the city of origin (Kiel, Germany) and the number of the original clone in the 96-well plate".
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5
votes
What does it mean to be a fully human monoclonal antibody?
I found this small article that seems to cover all your questions:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/human-monoclonal-antibody
Summary:
Being considered a human monoclonal ...
- 1,587
5
votes
Accepted
How to filter out the antibody light chains into kappa and lambda types on the PDB website?
The instructions are as follows.
Go to the RCSB PDB Webite.
Under the search bar, click Browse by Annotations.
Click the blue tab labeled ...
- 231
5
votes
Why are there so few full-length antibody structures?
There IS a problem!
In a previous version of this answer I focussed on various historical, technical, goal-related and commercial reasons for the predominance of structures of antibody fragments (Fab ...
- 24.3k
4
votes
How do scientists discover a new antigen and its epitope?
I would like to just add to Nicolai answer.
What is an antigen ?
First, and Nicolai said this, but I just want to make it clear, an antigen is anything that antibodies bind. That is distinct from and ...
- 681
4
votes
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Is a variable domain in immunoglobulin's heavy chain different from the one in light chain?
You are correct. In an IgG antibody, there are a total of four protein chains — two identical heavy chains, and two identical light chains, each heavy pairing with a light to form one of the two ...
- 15.2k
4
votes
Can multiple antibodies bind the same antigen?
Not only is it possible for multiple antibodies to bind a single antigen, when that happens, it's more likely to trigger a full immune response.
Here's a description of the concept from a company ...
- 8,751
4
votes
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What does it mean to be a fully human monoclonal antibody?
Following technquies are used for developing fully human monoclonal antibodies:
Complementarity-determining region (CDR) engraftment: This method is
performed by preparing cDNA library. CDRs are ...
- 1,307
4
votes
Do all monoclonal antibodies have a blocking effect?
No. Not all monoclonal antibodies block binding of other proteins. This depends entirely on the antibody and its epitope though. Most monoclonal antibodies target a small epitope, somewhere between 7 ...
- 11.2k
3
votes
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Difference between ‘tagging’ and ‘conjugating’ a fluorochrome to an antibody?
Conjugated and tagged mean the same thing here, although I would advise against using tagged here.
In the context of antibodies, tagging means the addition of a (short) peptide sequence to a protein....
- 1,473
3
votes
Accepted
About sandwich ELISA
This page from Cole-Parmer includes everything you could possibly want to know about the adsorption of biomolecules to polystyrene. To summarize:
binding is neither covalent nor ionic, but
it is ...
- 15.2k
3
votes
Accepted
Will a polyclonal antibody attach to proteins of different kDA?
If the sequence of the 26 kDa form is included within the sequence of the 28 kDa form then the answer is 'probably yes'.
However if the N- or C-terminus of the short form is an important/dominant ...
- 22.7k
3
votes
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What is the use of an antibody that is non-neutralizing?
The term "neutralizing" depends on context. In virology, it generally (not always) means it prevents the virus from binding to its receptor(s) and getting its genetic material inside the now-infected ...
- 15.2k
3
votes
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What is the rationale behind IgM being the default antibody?
When the Naive B cell gets activated and begins to secrete antibodies the affinity of the antibodies is low, as it hasn't yet gone through several cycles of affinity maturation. The increased avidity ...
- 344
3
votes
Can ELISA be used to detect a plant enzyme? Creating assay for a new enzyme
I want to add something on top of Chris answer.
The production of an antibody it is usually a quite slow (and expensive) process, an alternative that worth to consider is phage display (https://en....
- 3,098
3
votes
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How do I name a binding antibody? “Binding antibody to”, “binding antibody against”, or “anti-[antigen] binding antibody”?
The adjective “binding” is not used to qualify “antibody” in English scientific usage because linguistically it is thought to belong with the antigen the antibody binds.
Generally it is omitted if ...
- 24.3k
3
votes
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Why does Anti-A antibodies make type-A blood type clump?
When an antibody meets its antigen it will bind it. So if you add anti-A antibodies to A blood, these antibodies will bind the red blood cells. Because of its Y-shaped form, each antibody can bind two ...
- 51.5k
3
votes
Is antivenom fatal?
Anti-venoms are not fatal. They are also ideally not fatal even if administered without any snake-bite, provided the anti-venom has been approved for clinical use by the pharmaceutical regulatory ...
- 39
3
votes
Chirality of anti-bodies
Antibodies are proteins and proteins are made up of L-amino acids, which have at least 1 chiral centre. Therefore proteins contain chiral centres. So yes antibodies have chirality.
- 47
3
votes
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How are antibodies specific for a disease detected in the blood if everybody produces a different antibody for the same antigen?
Specific antibodies are typically detected using ELISA.
The way you make a test for an antibody to a particular pathogen is not by using secondary antibodies to the specific part of the target ...
- 43.9k
3
votes
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What is a function-triggering antibody?
The term "function-triggering antibodies" is not standard, these are more widely known as cross-linking antibodies. As you may know, an antibody has multiple "arms", with the ...
- 15.2k
3
votes
Meaning of "stripped" in "stripped antibody-depleted sera"
I believe this is a failure of editing, and the meaning in this paper of "stripped" cannot be determined without correspondence with an author. "Stripped" is an informal term for ...
- 9,024
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