Conversion of Agglutinins and Precipitins into ‘Univalent’ (Non-Agglutinating or Non-Precipitating) Antibodies by Photodynamic Irradiation of Rabbitantisera vs Pneumococci, Sheep-Red-Cells and Sea-Urchin Sperm

Open Access
Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Summary: Photo-oxidation of rabbit-antisera against sea-urchin sperm, pneumococci and sheep-erythrocytes converts the antibodies into a non-precipitating or non-agglutinating (‘univalent’) form which still combines specifically with the antigen and inhibits the action of the control antiserum. The inhibitive titers are found to increase initially with increased photooxidation beyond the point when loss of precipitating power of the antiserum is first obtained. High maximal values are reached and differences are observed in the values obtained by precipitative and agglutinative tests with the same system. From a non-precipitating antipneumococcal serum produced by moderate photo-oxidation, precipitating antibody is obtained by fractional salting-out with ammonium sulphate. Determinations of the antibody-nitrogen content of photo-oxidized anti-pneumococcal serum show no significant difference from that of the control antiserum. In anti-sheep-cell sera, photo-oxidized to various degrees, the hemolytic titer falls off rapidly while the agglutination-inhibiting titer rises, indicating that the ‘univalents’ do not function as hemolysin. The results are interpreted on the basis of the mutual-multivalence theory which they tend to support.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: