53
votes
Accepted
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 ...
- 6,967
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
Accepted
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:
...
- 8,206
6
votes
Can you Transfer Cancer Between People via Saliva or other Bodily Fluids?
Although transmissible cancer has been found in some species, such as Tasmanian Devils and clams, it is quite rare in most species. Certain viral and bacterial agents that cause cancer, however, can ...
- 2,395
6
votes
Accepted
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 ...
- 8,081
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 ...
- 847
6
votes
Accepted
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 ...
- 4,356
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
Accepted
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 ...
- 8,799
5
votes
Accepted
Antibodies stored in freezer instead of fridge
Most IgGs should be fine when stored in the freezer.
Freezing at -20 or -80 in small aliquots is the optimal storage
condition. Ali-quoting minimizes damage due to freezing and thawing,
as well ...
- 2,278
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".
- 962
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 ...
- 1,443
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 ...
- 23.3k
4
votes
Accepted
Are there any disadvantages to HRP conjugated PRIMARY antibodies
You can compare directly coupled antibodies to the classical indirect primary-secondary systems:
Directly coupled antibodies
Advantages:
quicker workflow as only one antibody is used
eliminates the ...
- 51.1k
4
votes
Antibodies stored in freezer instead of fridge
You don't specify which temperature of freezer you're talking about. Antibody can be stored at -80 for long time, but needs to avoid freeze and thaw process. Some people store aliquot of antibody in -...
- 355
4
votes
Accepted
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
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
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 ...
- 8,721
4
votes
Accepted
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 ...
- 1,297
3
votes
Accepted
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
Accepted
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....
- 3,068
3
votes
Can we use the HIV antibody test to detect HIV in newborns?
The rapid screen usually tests the oral mucosa by swabing the inside of the cheek and checking for the presence of anti-HIV envelope antibodies. Although the precise target of these antibodies seems ...
- 681
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
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....
- 1,463
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
Accepted
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 ...
- 23.3k
3
votes
Accepted
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 ...
- 51.1k
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
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