NATURE AND FORMATION OF ANTIBODIES 27 



Chairman Pauling: (Repeating question from the audience) The question 

 is: Does this discussion of hapten inhibition and evaluation of combining con- 

 stants of haptens with antibodies require the assumption of a single antibody 

 species or not? 



Shall I answer this? The answer is that antiserum in general is highly hetero- 

 geneous. It contains antibodies with a very great spread and the methods that 

 are used involving 50 per cent inhibition refer to the average antibody. 



