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25 votes
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What exactly is bound by the control line on COVID19 antigen tests?

According to biotrend (SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19): Rapid Antigen Test for Diagnosis), the control line has an immobilised Goat anti-chicken antibody. There, a chicken-IgY gets stuck which was carried from ...
markur's user avatar
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10 votes
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Why are O-antigens and H-antigens on (certain) bacteria called O and H?

The "H" and "O" identifiers first appeared in German-language publications around 1920 to describe different forms of disease-causing bacilli. Thankfully, Arkwright and Goyle ...
acvill's user avatar
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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 ...
Nicolai's user avatar
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6 votes
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Why can't SARS-CoV2 antigen lateral flow tests be used for testing animals?

I had a look around the literature, and it seems that the tests are slightly less sensitive for some of the variants of concern on non-human saliva samples than they are for human1, but in general can ...
bob1's user avatar
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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 ...
De Novo's user avatar
  • 8,751
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 ...
jwillis0720's user avatar
4 votes
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Minimum size for a peptide/protein to be immunogenic in human?

There's a few limiting factors including how proteins are presented that constrains the actual size needed to get peptide presentation. These depend largely on the MHC molecules (HLA in humans). The ...
CKM's user avatar
  • 8,101
4 votes

Sensitivity vs. Limit of Detection of rapid antigen tests

Not necessarily. Sensitivity and specificity are decision criterion-based measures. They are not actually separable from another, they are a consequence of choosing a threshold at which to say "...
Bryan Krause's user avatar
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4 votes

What is the significance of an adjuvant to traffic vaccine antigen directly to draining lymph nodes without diffusing into the systemic circulation?

This paper, Controlling timing and location in vaccines, explains the concept in detail. The TL:DR version is that immune response is affected by the amount of antigen that reaches lymphatic tissue, ...
anongoodnurse's user avatar
3 votes

Why do T cells have MHC II receptors?

That's the description in my book which has the same image. The book is: Janeway's Immunology (9th Edition) Article discussing MHC Class II expression in humans: https://doi.org/10.4049/jimmunol.168.2....
m4rio's user avatar
  • 815
3 votes

Could there be a pathogen which does not activate an immune response?

"I think, though am not at all sure, that pathogens need to invade cells to be dangerous." True in the case of viruses and some bacteria. Hiding within the cells of the host is the ...
Martín-Blas Pérez Pinilla's user avatar
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 ...
MattDMo's user avatar
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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 ...
Bryan Krause's user avatar
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3 votes
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How does adjuvant enhance the immunogenicity of antigen?

This is a quick answer to a very broad question since the mechanisms of adjuvants are very different. I'll try to summarize just a few. For a deeper understanding please start reading this paper and ...
alec_djinn's user avatar
  • 3,098
3 votes

How is a T lymphocyte specific to an antigen but not specific to an epitope?

Perhaps it would simplify for you to think of a model system? Let's take HIV because it's simple. The antigen in this case is a protein called ENV and it looks like this. All of those arrows are ...
jwillis0720's user avatar
3 votes

How is a T lymphocyte specific to an antigen but not specific to an epitope?

For this answer lets restrict ourselves to T dependent MHC II mediated responses. So, an APC like a macrophage or a dendritic cell, takes in a pathogen by phagocytosis and degrades it inside the cell....
Polisetty's user avatar
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2 votes
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Why does the blood not clump and result in death?

Some people do die from graft vs host disease after bone marrow transplants involving ABO incompatibility, but not usually from blood clots. Foreign red blood cells don't usually form significant ...
anongoodnurse's user avatar
2 votes
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How does one predict how large of an effect on antigenic drift a substitution in the amino acid sequence of a surface protein of influenza has?

Your understanding of influenza antigenic drift is, unfortunately, hypersimplified and mostly wrong. In particular, your notion that some mutations are more important for antigenic drift because of ...
iayork's user avatar
  • 14.2k
2 votes

Can MHC class I be used for presenting peptides of extracellular origin by non-professional APCs?

when non-professional APCs that can undergo phagocytosis (Eosinophil, neutrophil, dendritic cell) engulf bacteria Dendritic cells and probably neutrophils are professional APC, so this part of the ...
iayork's user avatar
  • 14.2k
2 votes

Are tumor-associated antigens unique to cancerous cells?

Carcinogenic tumor associated antigens correspond to any peptide chain (antigen) which triggers an immune response from the host. This means that they can be found anywhere inside, at the membrane, ...
Dr. H. Lecter's user avatar
2 votes

Are hormones antigenic?

Hormones have antigens. Usually they are antigens our immune systems recognize as self. Pretty much any big biological molecule will have antigens. FSH is no exception. The binding of FSH to anti-...
Willk's user avatar
  • 2,964
2 votes
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Is it possible for virus infected cells to continue to present a self-antigen on the MHC1?

Self antigen is presented throughout viral infections. You seem to think that cytotoxic T lymphocytes respond to absence of self. That’s backward. CTL respond to their specific peptide target no ...
iayork's user avatar
  • 14.2k
2 votes
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Detecting multiple compounds on a lateral flow immunoassay – is this a case of monoclonal vs polyclonal antibodies?

Background: I worked for a number of years as a product scientist for a fairly well-known antibody company, designing and producing polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies from several species. Of your ...
MattDMo's user avatar
  • 15.2k
2 votes
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CDRs and antigen-binding sites

Each antigen binding site (also known as paratope) is made up of six complementarity-determining regions (CDRs) - three from each of the light and heavy chains.
daemon's user avatar
  • 142
1 vote

Why do T cells have MHC II receptors?

Unfortunately the most recent review specialized on this topic (I found) dates back to 2004, and it's pretty confusingly written, IMHO. The general gist of it appears to be that T cells can act as APC ...
Fizz's user avatar
  • 3,052
1 vote

Easy and cheap antigen/antibody couple

A good choice is the IgG/anti-IgG pair for cheap, easy to demonstrate/work with system. E.g. Goat-IgG coupled with donkey anti-goat IgG. Just about any antibody supplier will have these. These type ...
Bob Tomas's user avatar
1 vote
Accepted

What happens to the molecules of the pathogens after phagocytosis?

The ingestion of a bacterium by a macrophage involves phagosome lysosome fusion, which you can read about in Abbas Basic Immunology, Ch 2. As you suspected, in addition to bacterial killing and ...
De Novo's user avatar
  • 8,751
1 vote
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Are all antibodies against a common antigen identical?

Alright, there are two major questions: (a) Are all the antibodies that are produced against a specific antigen necessarily identical? Not in most cases. Antigens can either be monovalent or ...
Luis Sierra's user avatar
1 vote

Reasons why this protein is not suitable as an immunogen?

Firstly, for better immunogenicity, we should select short peptide of approximately 20 amino acids. Longer peptide will definitely increase the immunogenicity, but that also increase the possibility ...
Twinkle Sheen's user avatar
1 vote

Reasons why this protein is not suitable as an immunogen?

The article implies E proteins are quite different between the previous known strains - so a vaccine targeted against E protein may only affect a limited range of strains. But when I do a BLAST ...
Polypipe Wrangler's user avatar

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