Paper
THE PRODUCTION OF ANTIBODIES
Published 1942 ·
Medical Journal of Australia
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Abstract
THE first monograph ot a series to be published by the 'Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Research In Medicine and Pathology comes from the pen of F. M. Burnet,' who has long worked In the field of problems in immunity. He has gathered much evidence in relation to the production ot antibodies and has put forth an Interesting hypothesis which unifies some theories and links together many otherwise Isolated observations. Burnet accepts the premise that the specific effect of an Immune serum is related to the globulin molecules which It contains, and rurther that it Is the surface of those molecules which has been adapted to unite with an individual antigen. He then discusses the nature of the plasma proteins and the variations of the globulin fraction after the injection of chemical or of particulate antigens. I?this section he includes many results of his own expenments In antibody titre after a single dose of antigen, and establishes the fact that antibody production continues at a decreasing rate after the antigen has disappeared from the circulation and that the rate of disappearance may be extremely slow, so that the production of antibody may be prolonged over a considerable period of time. There Is also evidence that a second injection of antigen provokes a higher level of response than the first. The author then considers the theories of protein structure and size and the intracellular molecules which must take part in the process of antibody formation in the cells of the retlculo-endothellal system. He discusses Bergmann's theory of molecular configuration and the symmetry of the polypeptide linkage. The suggestion Is put forward that certain points In the molecule may have greater stability than others and may be the places at which additions to the molecule could be formed in "partial replica" of the parent molecule. He believes that this parent molecule acts as an enzyme and a pattern at the same time, and can build and liberate these partial replicas. Antigenic material then, taken Into the cell, can modify the protein elaborated and cause the synthesis of the globulin molecule concerned In the corresponding immunity reaction. As the antigen Is destroyed the cell protein which produced the modified antibody molecule may continue to produce the same pattern and liberate it into the blood or lymph. Burnet draws attractive analogies between the enzyme activity of bacteria "trained" to ferment certain sugars and of tissue cells trained to produce antibody to a given nitrogenous antigen. He concludes with a review ot recent work in fields bearing on the subject and mentions problems yet to be solved. The monograph is written from the point or view of the biologist, and of necessity more attention Is devoted to biological than to chemical evidence; it may well be that advances in protein chemistry may sustain or modify this theory. In the present state of our knowledge, however, the author's theory coordinates the biological evidence on the activities of the reticulo-endothelial system and the chemical theories of molecular configuration In a useful way. This is a monograph for a worker in the field ot immunology and bacterial chemistry, not for the clinician or the inquiring amateur. The institute is to be congratulated on the steady constructive purpose behind the publication, which Dr. C. H. Kellaway expresses so clearly in his foreword. This monograph may well be called, in Wilfrid Trotter's happy phrase, "a due modicum of the vitamin ot ideas" which is so necessary tor the real growth ot the body of science.
The specific effect of an immune serum is related to the globulin molecules it contains, and antibody production continues at a decreasing rate after antigen disappearance, with a second injection of antigen provoking a higher level of response.
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