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"Men and Molecules: Molecular Medicine" February 26, 1962. Produced by the American Chemical Society Drawing the Analogy between Antibodies and the Sickle Cell Anemia Process. (0:57)

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Linus Pauling: Making an analogy with antibodies, we might say that perhaps these patients manufacture an abnormal sort of hemoglobin molecule that is capable of combining with itself; that has a region on one side that just fits neatly onto the region on the other side of a similar molecule. The molecules of hemoglobin would clamp onto one another, the second one onto the first one, the third one onto the second, and so on, forming a long rod. This long rod would line up with similar rods; general forces of attraction would bring them together, forming a long, needle-like crystal of hemoglobin, which as it grew in the red cell, would finally become longer than the diameter of the cell. Then as it continued to grow it would twist the red cell out of shape into the elongated forms that are observed.

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Date: February 26, 1962
Genre: sound
ID: 1962v.2
Copyright: More Information

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