Antibodies combining regions

Percus J K, Percus O E and Perelson A S 1993 Predicting the size of the T-cell receptor and antibody combining region from consideration of efficient self-nonself discrimination Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 90 1691-5... 

J. Inman, The Antibody Combining Region Speculation on the Hypothesis ot General Multispeciticity. In Theoretical Immunology, G. I. Bell, A. S. Perelson G. H. Pimbley, Jr., Eds. Marcel Dekker, Inc. New York, 1978. 

Besides correlating residues of the V region with one another, or with binding specificity, one may also attempt to look at the participation of certain amino acid residues in the interaction of ligand with the antibody-combining region. In the next sections, we will examine the techniques used to determine the contact residues of the combining site and to measure the size of that site. 

IV. Biological Significance of Antigen Binding A. Polyfunctional Antibody-Combining Regions... 

Residues 81-85 of the heavy chain, which Capra and Kehoe (1974) considered hypervariable in human heavy chains, are not part of the antibody combining site. They lie in a region exposed to solvent. Residues 84 and 85 are involved in a allotypic specificity in the rabbit (Mage, 1977), and the variation in the human VH chains may be associated with some function other than site complementarity. 

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