Keld Sorensen <KeldS at uic.edu> wrote:
>You could couple the protein to one of the common
>carriers, such as KLH or whatever.
>Keld.
>>>Dear Keld and Bob,
Is this really true? It does at least not fit to my understanding
of antibody diversity (Sorry I am biochemist and not immunologist).
I always thought that coupling to a carrier only helps with
haptens that are too small to elicit an immune response.In any case the
critical question seems to be that the B-cells presenting the antibodies
that would fit to the antigen are not removed from the circulation in the
process leading to self tolerance. If that had happened then it should
not help to couple the protein to KLH etc.
Did I get something wrong? If so please let me know, since I am
really interested in that topic. We often immunize rabbits with proteins
of high homology (80 - 90%) and nearly identical tertiary structure. I
always suspected that the antibodies I obtained are preferentially
directed against those amino acid stretches that differ between the
antigen and the rabbit (or mouse in case of monoclonals) homologue. (Any
published examples from epitope mapping?
Kind regards
Torsten
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Torsten Boerchers /
_/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ Institute of Chemical- and Biochemical Sensor/
_/ _/ _/ _/ Research (Molecular Biology Group) /
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