# Idiotypic Antibodies

**URL:** <https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/idiotypic-antibodies/4908>\
**Category:** Conversation\
**Tags:** Science\
**Created:** [February 28, 2019, 5:41pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/idiotypic-antibodies/4908 "2019-02-28T17:41:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 10

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**Author:** ![swamidass](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/swamidass/32/3_2.png) [@swamidass](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/swamidass)\
**Post date:** [March 2, 2019, 2:06am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/idiotypic-antibodies/4908/10 "2019-03-02T02:06:46Z")

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@Agauger, from another thread, and relevant here:

> [@Beta-Lactamase, Antibody Enzymes, and Sequence Space](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/beta-lactamase-antibody-enzymes-and-sequence-space/4271/133):
>
> One point that subverts the idea of this being caused by prior immunization is that the enzyme is IC1, requiring the phage particle, not functional on its own.
> 
> @Rumraket notes earlier that even if it was immunized, that doesn’t explain how the immune system searched a 10^77 space, as Axe/@Agauger would predict. Perhaps you could argues 10^15 or so, but we are very far from the ID prediction.
> 
> As @mercer notes, this is not the only paper we can go to. There are many many more. So we can work through the next paper after this is digested.
> 
> This seems to be a major problem for ID theory, which has relied on the correctness of Axe’s hypothesis. It seems this data invalidates the hypothesis. I am very interested to see @Agauger and @bjmiller’s response.

Let us say that they were immunized. How much of antibody sequence space do you think these small animals were able to explore? if not 10^10, what exactly? 10^15? 10^20?

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