IT IS not a problem university lecturers face all that often. In the
1980s, Raymond Hamers was confronted by a couple of bold undergraduates
complaining that the practical experiments for their course were boring and
predictable. Could he find them something more original to investigate?
Hamers, an immunologist then at the Free University of Brussels (VUB) in
Belgium, remembered that he had half a litre of camel blood sitting in a
freezer. Although it was earmarked for research into sleeping sickness, he
figured he could spare a little for the students. "Why don't we see if we
can purify camel antibodies?" he asked them.
The results flummoxed everyone. "We couldn't believe it," Hamers says.
The pattern of antibodies extracted from the blood suggested that, in
addition to the standard type found in all vertebrates, the camel produced
an entirely novel, simpler variety.
What started out as a student project soon ...
The complete article is 2590 words long.
