Theoretical and experimental investigation of immunoprecipitation pattern formation in gel medium.

We present the results of our comprehensive study of precipitation pattern formation by interacting immunogenic proteins in a gel medium. Formation of immunoprecipitation patterns was studied both theoretically and experimentally. Based on a system of reaction-diffusion equations, continuous deterministic description provides a quantitative model of reaction kinetics. Discrete stochastic microscopic description was used to supplement the results of reaction-diffusion model by mimicking product aggregation that contributes to a deeper understanding of the mechanism that governs the phenomenon. Our studies have shown that the mechanism of immunoprecipitation pattern formation is specific for protein precipitation and differs from such mechanisms for any inorganic or biological substances. By microscopic examination, we demonstrated that immunoprecipitation patterns can have a microstructure. We found that the microscopic structure of immunoprecipitation patterns results from multicomponent composition of antiserum.