Abstract
The dissociation constant of the circulating IgG antibodies is suggested to be proportional to the partial concentrations of these antibodies in blood serum in equilibrium. This coefficient, called serological number, is a dimensionless parameter and may be equal for all antibodies in a serum. Based on the serological number, we derived the equilibrium equation of the humoral immune system which allows estimating the number of different binding motifs in a serum. This equation also allows estimating the number of binding motifs of posttranslational and conformational nature. The feasibility of measuring the serological number via peptide arrays was demonstrated. Fifteen peptides with unique binding motifs were incubated and stained with the blood serum of a healthy adult at different dilutions. From these experiments, the serological number was determined. The serological number may explain the pre-existing antibody response after vaccination.
Highlights
The easy extraction of circulating serum antibodies from blood samples and their ability to selectively bind to targets involved in immune defense make serum antibodies very attractive for studying the immune system response
The sum of the S-numbers over all subset antibodies of a serum sample gives the equation of equilibrium for the humoral immune system:
Zbm is the number of different binding motifs, Sk is the serological number of the antibody with a number k, and k is the index of addition over all circulating antibodies
Summary
The easy extraction of circulating serum antibodies from blood samples and their ability to selectively bind to targets involved in immune defense make serum antibodies very attractive for studying the immune system response. A straightforward approach to performing serum-antibody profiling is serum sample incubation with random peptide microarrays. In the case of a limited number of peptides (
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