Word: antigen
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...Essex's group has identified the protein products most closely linked to the lethal effects of the retrovirus, and the viral antigen--glycoprotein 120--the likely target for preventive vaccines against AIDS," the Foundation's citation read...
...advent of genetic engineering in the 1970s made such tedious work obsolete. Using methods for dissecting molecules, the two groups of researchers reporting in Science were able to identify the specific antigen, found on the surface of the sporozoite, that is responsible for producing immunity to this stage of the parasite, and they were able to unravel part of the chemical structure of the antigen. To their surprise, it was quite simple. So simple, says Victor Nussenzweig, "that it can be very easily synthesized using plain, old-fashioned chemistry." Nonetheless, a vaccine based on the antigen still faces...
Over the past ten years, no area has developed faster than the examination of bloodstains. "Before, we used to be satisfied with identifying a blood sample as type A, B, AB or O. Now we have 13 or more different antigen and enzyme systems we can pick out," says Gary Howell, 34, director of the Kansas City regional crime lab. The probability that any two people will share the same assortment of these blood variables is .1% or less. Because of that, Howell was recently able to use two tiny bloodstains to help convict a double murderer...
...development of the vaccine began in 1963, when Dr. Baruch Blumberg of the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia identified a protein from the hepatitis B virus in the blood of an Australian aborigine. Researchers soon found that the protein, dubbed Australia antigen, existed in large quantities in the blood of carriers. Dr. Saul Krugman of New York University then discovered that when infected blood serum is boiled, the virus is killed but the antigen remains able to induce production of the antibodies that prevent the illness. The experimental vaccine was developed by Virologist Maurice Hilleman of the Merck Institute...
...forces sent into combat are antibodies, tiny molecular missiles that attach themselves to the intruder's surface and help destroy the invader. They are highly efficient and selective; each antibody is so exquisitely designed that it matches up precisely with only one site on the invader or antigen, almost as if it were a key fitting into a lock...