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On Antigenic Properties of Horse Serum and Egg Albumen After Heat Coagulation

From the Department of Bacteriology and Immunology, Harvard Medical School

Abstract

In a recent publication on the solubility of coagulated proteins,Wells and Lewis¹ employed complement fixation and anaphylacticexperiments to test the presence in solution of horse serumand egg white which had been completely coagulated by heat,and subsequently washed. Immunological reactions are of considerablygreater delicacy than any known qualitative chemicaltest, and by these methods they succeeded in showing that afterintraperitoneal injection into guinea-pigs, coagulated egg andserum proteins were dissolved in sufficient amounts to sensitizethe animals to the homologous uneoagulated protein. Theyconcluded from their experiments that heat coagulation is possiblya reversible process, and that such re-dissolved protein haslost none of its immunological antigenic characteristics.

In recent studies of our own, in which the question of heatcoagulation and antigenic properties was involved, we encounteredconditions which we believe have interest both inconnection with the observation of Wells and Lewis, as well as inshowing the considerable exposure to heat which proteins willwithstand without being antigenically altered.