Semantic resources project/Antibodies/Revised Methods/Immunochemistry

Description
Immunochemistry

Outline
The branch of chemistry studying the reactions and components of the immune system (Wikipedia)

Ontology Terms
NCI Thesaurus: "Immunochemistry"
 * http://ncicb.nci.nih.gov/xml/owl/EVS/Thesaurus.owl#Immunochemistry
 * http://bioportal.bioontology.org/visualize/40377/Immunochemistry
 * "The field of chemistry concerned with chemical processes in immunology (such as chemical studies of antigens and antibodies)."

MeSH: "Immunochemistry"
 * D007120
 * http://bioportal.bioontology.org/visualize/40401/D007120
 * "Field of chemistry that pertains to immunological phenomena and the study of chemical reactions related to antigen stimulation of tissues. It includes physicochemical interactions between antigens and antibodies."

Usage
"'Although such procedures will continue to be useful, an unambiguous accessibility to antigens in intact specimens is often required by sectioning them before immunochemical labelling.'"

Tokuyasu, "Immunochemistry on ultrathin frozen sections" The Histochemical Journal. 12:4 (July 1980).

From the same article, there's also a good quote about indirect vs. direct methods of immunochemistry:

"'It is possible to use the direct method, that is, to immunostain the specimen directly with antibody-ferritin conjugates but, more commonly, the indirect method is used for its convenience. This method involves immunostaining first with antibodies specific for a given antigen and then labelling the antibodies with ferritin-conjugated anti-immunoglobulin. The indirect method is in principle somewhat inferior in resolution to the direct method because it interposes another layer of antibodies between the ferritin and the antigen but, on the other hand, it provides an amplification of signal and probably allows a better penetration into the specimen. In addition, in the indirect method, conjugates of ferritin with goat anti-rabbit IgG, for instance, can be used for all rabbit antibodies, whereas in the direct method, each individual rabbit antibody has to be conjugated with ferritin.'"

Definition
From MeSH: Field of chemistry that pertains to immunological phenomena and the study of chemical reactions related to antigen stimulation of tissues. It includes physicochemical interactions between antigens and antibodies.