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Answer: We are living in world filled with microbes, therefore, there will be "natural antibodies" that are produced to commensal microbes etc. Therefore, it is likely that there are some antibodies that cross-react with non-infectious (e.g.commensal) and infectious (e.g. pathogens) materials.
Answer: You are welcome!
Answer: Humanised antibodies are antibodies of non-human origin but their constant domains are replaced by human constant domain sequences so as to nullify immunogenicity. Chimeric antibodies on the other hand are simply 'hybrid antibody molecules' which could even be a dimer of two different antigen-binding heavy and light chains (for eg., those designed for use in immunohistochemistry). In other words, a humanised antibody called a chimera but a chimera need not be a humanised antibody.
Answer: These are suffixes and prefixes that are used to refer to pharmacological 'drugs' or medicines in the market. International conventions or societies decide on these although many of these as I read them are a little confusing. Your question is a difficult one and cannot be addressed by a simple description. Please refer to a couple of web sites -- I am giving two of them that I found here for helping you understand (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomenclature_of_monoclonal_antibodies and http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-mab). So far as synthesising them -- as far as my knowledge goes, they have to be done using rDNA cloning and expression since they use sequences from different animal antibodies. These cloned genes are then overexpressed in various systems to produce the desired protein. No single animal can be made to produce them such as in the case of immunisation of rabbit/mouse/etc with an antigen.
Answer: Polysaccharides are much simpler than proteins that are made up of amino acids. The conformations of proteins are multiple and these form epitopes that are recognized by antibodies; hence are more immunogenic. Proteins are more immunogenic than polysaccharides but antibodies can be made to polysaccharides. Polysaccharides are T-independant antigens. Bacterial capsular polysaccharides are known to elicit antibody generation. Basically repeat units present in polysaccharides crosslink immunoglobulin receptors and can activate B cells to produce antibodies. Another aspect to keep in mind is that proteins can be presented by APC to T cells but polysaccharides do not have such an elaborate mechanism for presentation -- that is probably the reason for the T-independant nature or anti-polysaccharide antibody response
Answer: Proteins are BIG molecules and will have stretches of hydrophilic and hydrophobic patches. Antibodies are generated mainly to hydrophilic and accessible residues. Note that antibodies also recognize conformational epitopes. Therefore, a protein offers several epitopes for antibodies and there are lots of possibilities.
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