• GingaNinga@lemmy.world
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    23 hours ago

    I don’t think you can do that with a single population of cells. Theres a group of cells that sample antigens and process them for presentation then a separate group of cells that the first group will present the antigen to. Once presented there are a set of standardized regions related to the class of antibody then a set of “hypervariable” regions. You would need an organoid/organ system to accomplish this in vitro or ex vivo. Most of the time it will be a macrophage or something that for example ingests a live bacteria (or venom), it will register this as foreign, process the particle and travel to a lymph node where all the immunology takes place (B cells). I don’t think theres a simple way to recreate this in the lab its completely different from synthesizing chemicals since each antibody is fine-tuned to its antigen. You might even get different antibodies generated for the same compound depending on how everything went down and which region was presented (eg monoclonal vs poloclonal products).