The role of fungal extracellular enzymes in wood biodegradation is incompletely understood. Our lab is beginning a project utilizing monoclonal antibodies to characterize extracellular metabolites of the brown rot fungus Poria placenta Fr. (Cooke). Monoclonal antibody technology takes advantage of the ability of antibody secreting spleen cells from immunized mice to fuse in the presence of polyethylene glycol (PEG) with myeloma cells, which do not produce antibodies but do have the ability to grow in culture. The resultant hybrid cell or hybridoma has the capacity to produce antibodies of predetermined specificity and to grow "immortally" in culture. These hybridomas can be grown on a selective media, cloned, and the highly specific antibodies they produce purified. Monoclonals can be produced to fungal enzymes or other metabolites of interest. Monoclonal antibodies are capable of being more specific for a particular antigen than polyclonal antibodies because each B-lymphocyte (removed from the spleen) produces only one specific antibody to an antigen fraction. In our research, injection of extracellular fungal filtrates into an animal presents the immune system with a variety of antigen sites to produce antibodies to not only the target antigen (a glucosidase, for example) but also to extraneous materials injected with the extracellular filtrate. Two approaches exist to implement production of antisera to the desired antigen. One is to purify the antigen prior to injection. This solution has obvious advantages but it also has disadvantages.

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