HAUROWITZ-PAULING THEORY 



(i) antibody can be produced only while antigen or its 

 determinants remain as such in the tissues : 



(ii) antibody can be produced against any type of organic 

 pattern provided it is presented on an appropriate 

 carrier macromolecule, most commonly protein in 

 character. 



3. Burnet-Fenner indirect template theory 



In 1949, Burnet and Fenner published a comprehensive 

 discussion of the available information in terms of what has 

 been referred to as an 'indirect template' theory. This was 

 elaborated but not basically altered by Burnet in 1956. 



The theory was an attempt to include in a general formu- 

 lation those features for which the direct template theory has 

 no point of contact. We held, for instance, that the two most 

 important features of immune reactions were {a) that body 

 components are immunologically inert and that an equivalent 

 tolerance to foreign antigens can be demonstrated if they are 

 introduced at an appropriate stage in embryonic life and 

 {b) that antibody production can continue long after the 

 effective antigen has disappeared from the body. 



The indirect template theory still adopted the view that 

 antibody production was an active response of cells to the 

 entry of foreign organic material, and for this theory the 

 existence of natural antibody was an accidental and irrelevant 

 circumstance. The new features were essentially three in 

 number : 



(i) To account for the non-antigenicity of body com- 

 ponents these were assumed to carry ' self-markers ' ; at 

 some point in the antibody-producing sequence 

 a 'recognition unit' was postulated to act as a means 

 of detecting material carrying self-markers and 

 deflecting it from the possibility of immune response ; 

 (ii) To account for the persistence of antibody-producing 

 capacity it was postulated that a 'genocopy' of the 

 antigenic determinant was incorporated in the genome 



51 4-2 



