ABSTRACT
Information concerning the precise structure of the antibody molecule started to accumulate, as technological developments were applied to the study of the general characteristics of antibodies. By the early 1940s, antibodies had been characterized electrophoretically as gammaglobulins (Fig. 1) and also classified into large families by their sedimentation coefficient determined by analytical ultracentrifugation (7S and 19S antibodies), reflective of the molecular weight of monomeric and polymeric immunoglobulins. It was also proven that plasma cells were responsible for immunoglobulin synthesis and that a malignancy known as multiple myeloma was a malignancy of immunoglobulin-producing plasma cells.
