Summary
Employing adjuvant techniques of immunization in rabbits, sufficient antibody can be produced against synthetic copolymers of glutamic acid and lysine so that precipitin reactions can be observed. When the copolymer was injected intramuscularly in a saline vehicle no detectable antibody was produced in man. Based on this fact the possible future utility of these macromolecules as plasma expanders has been mentioned. The antibody response in rabbits was shown to be heterogeneous and to vary among rabbits injected with the same antigen. Although the copolymers were produced by the same synthetic procedures, their heterogeneity has been demonstrated by immunochemical techniques. It has been suggested that the antigenicity of copolymers without tyrosine may be dependent upon the presence of some areas of rigidity and a certain amount of randomness in the amino acid sequences.
Footnotes
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↵This work was supported by the Department of the Army, Office of the Surgeon General, Contract No. DA-49-193-MD-2113 and by Grant No. E3514 from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, U.S.P.H.S.
- Received May 29, 1961.
- Copyright, 1962, by The Williams & Wilkins Company
- Copyright © 1962 by The American Association of Immunologists, Inc.
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