Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A substance that when introduced into the body stimulates the production of an antibody. Antigens include toxins, bacteria, foreign blood cells, and the cells of transplanted organs.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun immunology A substance that induces an
immune response , usually foreign.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun any substance (as a toxin or enzyme) that stimulates an immune response in the body (especially the production of antibodies)
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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In non-permissive transformed cells the antigen is a protein of molecular weight of about 94,000 daltons
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The most important antigen is the machismo that continues to permeate these work environments.
Why women quit technology careers Peggy 2008
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The most important antigen is the machismo that continues to permeate these work environments.
Archive 2008-06-01 Peggy 2008
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It was known that antigen is endocytosed with antigen receptors and then degraded.
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The H antigen is an intermediate stage in the production of the A and B antigens.
Rare blood donor registry; need of the hour - Cover Story - Express Healthcare Management 2004
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Boon's group, and others, have determined that sometimes more than one antigen is associated with a gene: peptides in the MAGE-3 gene associate with at least two different MHC molecules, A-1 and A-2.
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Searching for this antigen is like looking for a five-word sentence in a 300,000-word novel, buried in a three-billion-letter text of uniformly fine print.
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That the T antigen is specified by the viral DNA is strongly suggested by its in vitro synthesis using a wheat germ extract primed with various messengers (30), especially since the size of the product depends on the nature of the messenger.
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The discrepancy of the two molecular weights makes it very unlikely that the T antigen is a cellular protein modified by a viral function, because two different proteins would have to be modified in the same extract depending on the messenger used.
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SV40 genome can specify proteins of a molecular weight of about 100,000 daltons altogether, the T antigen is likely to be its sole product and, therefore, to be the transforming protein.
jwjarvis commented on the word antigen
etymology: antibody generator = anti-gen
November 16, 2010