Penicillin
Penicillin, the first true antibiotic because it is a natural microbial product, was first discovered in 1896 by a twenty-one-yearold French medical student named Ernest Duchesne. His work was …
Digestion of Proteins by Proteases
Proteases (also known as proteinases or peptidases ) hydrolyze the peptide bond between amino acid residues in a polypeptide chain. Proteases may be specific and limited to one or …
Westren Blotting of Proteins
Often researchers will use Western blotting to identify proteins. Western blots rely on having an antibody to the protein. Antibodies are extremely specific and will bind only to one …
Gel Electrophoresis OF Proteins
Studying proteins requires the ability to isolate and identify the proteins in a particular sample. The first step is to separate them. Much as electrophoresis on agarose gels is …
Proteomics
Today we have the genome sequences for humans as well as many other animals, plants, fungi, and bacteria. All these data have given scientists a global view of the …
Immune Memory and Vaccination
Individuals who survive an infection normally become immune to that particular disease, although not to other diseases. This is because the immune system “remembers” foreign antigens, a process called …
Monoclonal Antibodies For Clinical Use
There are many clinical uses for antibodies. They are used in diagnostic procedures (including the ELISA), for pregnancy testing, and to detect the presence of proteins characteristic …
Structure and Function of Immunoglobulins
Depending on the type of heavy chain, antibodies are categorized into different classes, and assume different roles in the immune system. The most abundant and typical antibody has a …
Antibody Structure
Each antibody consists of four protein subunits, two light chains and two heavy chains , arranged in a Y-shape. Disulfide bonds between cysteine amino acid residues hold the chains …
The Great Diversity of Antibodies
Antibodies are proteins that recognize and bind to alien molecules. Because there are an almost infinite variety of possible alien molecules, a correspondingly vast number of different antibody molecules …