Antigen-Antibody Reactions in Vivo

Volume 5 in Methods in Immunology and Immunochemistry
1976, Pages 457-506

Publisher Summary

This chapter discusses the application of electron microscopy to problems in immunology. The electron microscope is being increasingly employed in the elucidation of the mechanisms of immune reactions. This instrument has been employed to reveal the disposition of intracellular organelles and intracellular immunoglobulins during antibody synthesis, the distribution of antigenic substances during immunization, the fine structure of immunologically competent cells of both the humoral and the cell-bound antibody varieties, and the distribution of cell-specific antigenic markers on such cells. It has also proved feasible to discern ultrastructural aspects of the cytopathology inflicted by a variety of presumably immunological injuries. Of particular interest and considerable potential value in the structural study of immune mechanisms are techniques that permit the use of the electron microscope in conjunction with the immunochemical specificity of antibody employed as a cytologic stain. It is necessary that antibody used as a specific staining reagent for electron microscopy have electron scattering power sufficient to be recognizable against the background density of the biological specimen. Methods for covalent, non-covalent, and immunological complexing of antibody with the iron-containing protein ferritin, with enzymes, and with viruses have been devised for this purpose. Of these, only the several ferritin-conjugated antibody techniques have to date resulted in antibody so labeled as readily to permit the potential recognition and identification of individual antibody molecules at or near their individual sites of interaction with antigen.