Contemporary Topics in Immunochemistry

In 1897, Ehrlich suggested that natural preformed receptors from the surface of cells provided immunity to various chemical substances. Many years later, in 1940, Pauling proffered the concept that antibodies comprised a single poly­ peptide chain and that each end of the protein could form an antigen-binding site. Burnet tried to explain the diversity of antibody specificity by hypothesizing that...