Abstract
Antisera were prepared in rabbits to plastocyanins of nettle, spinach, and braodbean. With these antisera a correlation was observed between the degree of immunological cross-reactivity and the degree of sequence resemblance among plastocyanins. However, the strength of the correlation varied markedly in some antisera. Also, some plastocynins elicited a very weak immune response. Even when anomalous antisera were eliminated from antiserum pools, the overall correlation was poorer than that observed for other protein systems. It was shown that the weakened correlation was probably not due to (a) changes in the oxidation state of plastocyanin copper, (b) loss of copper, (c) an unusually low number of antigenic sites, or (d) a peculiarity of one particular assay system, such as the micro-method of complement fixation or the quantitative precipitin method. It was concluded that the effect was probably due tot he small size of plastocyanin. However, the lack of cross-reactions with plastocyanins between 0 and 10% sequence difference and the presence of covalently-bound carbohydrate may also be significant.
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