Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 1-2. Amino acid residues of an anti-lysozyme antibody in direct contact with lysozyme
(from Kabat
et al
., 1991).
Light Chain
CDR1
His 30
Tyr 32
FR2
CDR2
Tyr 49
Tyr 50
CDR3
Phe 91
Trp 92
Ser 93
Heavy Chain
FR1
CDR1
Thr 30
Gly 31
Tyr 32
CDR2
Trp 52
Gly 53
Asp 54
CDR3
Arg 96
Asp 97
Tyr 98
Arg 99
The idea of how the combination of various CDR's can give rise to
antibodies of different specificities, and the identification of numerous
antibody genes became one the most fascinating area of molecular biology
research during the past 20 years. A brief summary of the generation of
CDR3's of the antibody light and heavy chains will be discussed below.
SWITCH PEPTIDE AND J-MINIGENE
In 1967, Milstein was trying to estimate the number of genes for human
kappa light chains. He noticed that in the variable region, subgroups could
be defined by using the first 23 amino acid residues from the N-terminal.
However, there were several different sequences in the region from position
104 to 107 for each subgroup, and these short segments were shared by
various subgroups. He designated them as switch peptides. We (Kabat
et
al
., 1978) made a detailed analysis of the amino acid sequences between the
CDR's, i.e. the FR's, and noted that some of these FR amino acid sequences
