What history tells us XXXIV. The complex history of the selective model of antibody formation

International audienceNiels Jerne was the first to propose in 1955 a selective model of antibody formation : antibodies with different specificities preexist in the organism, and the ones recognizing a foreign molecule, for instance the components of an invading pathogen, are amplified. Some years later, David Talmage and Frank Burnet will shift from a molecular to a cellular model : different immune cells synthesize different antibodies, and those synthesizing antibodies that specifically recognize an invading agent are activated, and multiply in the organism. In this contribution, I show that these two models were produced in very different contexts : before and after the main results of molecular biolog. The role of genes in protein synthesis and the spontaneous folding of proteins were observations that led to the abandonment of the initial model of Jerne in favor of the model of Talmage and Burnet