Word: antigen
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Forced Evolution. Until now, a vaccine to combat a newly evolved strain could be prepared only after the event (TIME, Aug. 21). Ideally, as Professor Claude Hannoun explained it, scientists would like to anticipate all the antigenic changes that nature might make in the next few years in the virus' protein coat. But how to anticipate nature? That would require capturing all the Hong Kong derivative strains now available, growing them in the laboratory and attacking them with different types of antibody. Most would be neutralized, but in this artificial equivalent of the Darwinian process of natural selection...
Though the American and the Englishman never collaborated directly, their research has, in effect, followed the same paths since 1959. Antibodies form complex, giant molecules. Porter concentrated on those parts of the molecule that give an antibody the capacity to react with a foreign or threatening substance (an antigen) and destroy it. Using a protein-splitting enzyme called papain, Porter broke the antibody molecule into three fragments. He found that the molecule is Y-shaped. The two smaller and similar parts of the structure are the ones that are capable of combining with the antigen; the larger one lacks this...
...heavy" ones that make up the trunk. After establishing that antibodies have some flexible amino-acid chains, Edelman was able to demonstrate how the body can form different antibodies to deal with specific diseases. He also demonstrated how parts of the antibody molecule adhere to the antigen molecule, while others attack...