In article <3614289A.5A26 at ix.netcom.com>, Todd Miller <todd33 at ix.netcom.com> writes:
> Leonard Pattenden wrote:
>>> I have shown the
>> Virology 230 papers were not about "non-isolation" or it's
>> "impossibility". It was about microvesicle contamination.
>> Leonard, maybe you can help me with a question I've never gotten
> a good answer to. With all this microvesicle contamination that
> comes along with "HIV" when it is purified on sucrose gradients
> (at least until recently, when a paper you know about found that
> protease treatment of the gradient fraction containing "HIV"
> could remove up to 95% of the contaminants, mostly actin), how
> did Dr Gallo generate antibodies to "HIV" in a rabbit back in
> 1984 in the _Science_ papers that made him so famous?
It's really simple todd. if you inject a rabbit with say, 10 ug of gp120 and
10ug of actin (say 50% contaminants in the material). the rabbit will make
antibodies to both gp120 and actin (if you put it in complete freund's
adjuvant they will also make antibodies to the dead tb bacilli it contains).
The principle you seem to be missing is you don't need pure antgens to produce
antibodies.
Nor do you need pure antigens to measure the antibodies, although it helps.
