How are monoclonal antibodies produced?

Video transcript

Hello, everyone. And welcome back. Let's take a look at our next question. What are monoclonal antibodies? A antibodies that are produced by a single B cell antibodies that are produced B antibodies are produced by multiple B cells. C antibodies that are produced by a single T cell or D antibodies that are produced by multiple T cells. Well, without even thinking any further, we can go ahead and eliminate choices C and D if we recall that antibodies are produced by B cells. So cross out the T cell options right away. And then if we just look at our name monoclonal monos single leads us to our correct answer, which is that there are antibodies produced by a single B cell. So cross out choice B and this means that since they are produced by this single B cell, they are all identical as we can guess by the colonial part of the name. And they are of course very highly specific in terms of binding to things because they only bind to one particular antigen or epitope. So we're used to thinking of antibodies just in the context of fighting disease, but we can utilize the specificity of antibodies to find things. And this has applications in diagnostics and therapy and research. Because for instance, if we want to see is a particular protein in a specific sample of tissue or from a specific type of cell, you can put a label on this antibody. You can then run a particular sample on a gel and look for a band that either fluoresces or you can use a radioactive label. So there's many, many techniques that take advantage of this specificity and then say, oh we can put a label on this antibody and find the very specific molecule we're looking for with very high specificity, it won't bind to even very similar um ops. So once again, monoclonal antibodies are choice a antibodies that are produced by a single B cell. See you in the next video.