A Review of: “Biochemistry and Methodology of Lipids,Eds. A.R. Johnson and J.B. Davenport Wiley-Interscience,New York, 1971 x + 578 pages,ill., hard cover; $29.50”

A previous communication from this laboratory¹ as well as one from another³ described the separation of α₂-macroglobulin from swine serum. The products from both laboratories contained, in addition to α₂-macroglob-ulin, an additional macroglobulin contaminant with α₂-globulln mobility. Due to their physicochemical similarity these macroglobulins are not resolved using conventional column procedures such as ion exchange chromatography and gel filtration. Subsequent experiments have shown that immunoelectro-phoretically pure swine α₂-macroglobulln is present, in good yield (65%) in the breakthrough effluent of columns of Bio-Gel A-1.5m-Reactive Blue 2 while the contaminating macroglobulin is tightly bound. The production of highly purified swine α₂-macroglobulin utilizing this observation is the subject of the present report. The product of the separation was found to be homogeneous when subjected to Immunoelectrophoresis, at a concentration of 14–16 mg/ml, and diffused against antiswlne whole serum antibody. The production of monospecific antibody, a more stringent test for homogeneity, resulted when the purified α₂-macroglobulin was injected into rabbits. Physicochemical analyses on the purified product showed that swine and human α₂-macro-globulins are true homologs.     

Symposium on J.-L. Dessalles’s Why we Talk (OUP, 2007): Precis by J.-L. Dessalles,commentaries by E. Machery,F. Cowie,and J. Alexander,Replies by J.-L. Dessalles

This symposium discusses J.-L. Dessalles's account of the evolution of language, which was presented in Why we Talk (OUP 2007).