Antibodies against protein complex - (Dec/28/2012 )

Is it possible to raise antibodies against multiple protein complex? I was wondering what would happen if we inject a protein complex in rabbit/mice...will it make antibodies?

It should produce Abs, but the problem will be that some parts will be more antigenic than others and hence the antiserum might not be as useful as you would suspect.

Neuron,

if you immunize with a complex of proteins you will raise a polyclonal response. Given that some epitopes are immuno-dominant compared to others, most probably the result will be that you get antibodies to only a few of the proteins of your complex. I have done this several times with that results; there is also publications confirming this results. Hope this helps!

Thanks bob and chelo. Even same thing was coming in my mind also, but I was just thinking..suppose you raise antibodies with a complex, and you know the identity of the proteins of that complex. Then after collecting the sera, one can purify the specific antibody by using the protein or peptide affinity column ..is it possible?...I may be wrong..I am not at all an immunologist ...I was reading a paper, this idea came into my mind and I just thought to discuss it with experts. Chelo can you share the link for the publication you mentioned?

Chelo dint come back, somebody else please share some links or papers that mention about immunization with protein complex. I am really interested to find out if somebody has done it. whenever I search for the papers I only get purification of multiprotein complex. As chelo mentioned that publications are there, I tried but couldn't find them.