Antibodies light- and heavy-chain

Fusion of human lymphocytes with human lymphoblastoid cell lines is a very inefficient process. Fusion of human lymphocytes with murine myeloma cells lead to very unstable hybrids. Upon fusion, preferential loss of human genetic elements is often observed. Unfortunately, particularly common is the loss of chromosomes 2,14 and 22, which encode antibody light and heavy chain loci. The production yields of human monoclonals upon immortalization of the human B-lymphocyte (by whatever means) are also low. 

The zinc-binding site of carbonic anhydrase serves as a structural paradigm for the incorporation of a de novo zinc-binding site in an antibody (Iverson a/., 1990 Roberts cf a/., 1990 Tainer and Roberts, 1990). Because individual antibody light- and heavy-chain libraries can be com-... 

Fig. 3.12. Fine structures of the variable regions of antibody light and heavy chains showing the positions of the CDRs. (Adapted from Hood ef al. (1984).)...

Figure 5.8 Electrospray and transformed electrospray spectra of the light- and heavy-chain antibody fragments of recombinant ritnximab obtained by LC-MS analysis. Reprinted from 7. Chromatogr., A, 913, Wan, H. Z., Kaneshiro, S., Frenz, J. and Cacia, J., Rapid method for monitoring galactosylation levels dnring recombinant antibody production by electrospray mass spectrometry with selective-ion monitoring , 437-446, Copyright (2001), with permission from Elsevier Science.

Plants have the ability to assemble immunoglobulin heavy chains and light chains to form full-length antibodies very efficiently [24]. In mammalian plasma cells, the assembly mechanism is only partially understood. The immunoglobulin light and heavy chains are synthesized as precursor proteins, and signal sequences direct... 

Chemical reduction of the antibody results in the production of both light and heavy chains, with the heavy chains showing the different levels of glycosyla-tion that are of interest. The HPLC system used to separate the light and heavy chains consisted of a Poros Rl/H 100 x 2.1 mm column maintained at 60°C. Gradient elution was used from 90% of a 2% acetic acid solution (solvent A) 10% acetonitrile/2-propanol (70 30 vol/vol) (solvent B) to 25% solvent A 75% solvent B over 30 min at a flow rate of 0.5 ml min-1. 

Somatic hypermutation Mutations occurring in the variable region genes of the light and heavy chains during the formation of memory B cells. Those B cells whose affinity is increased by such mutations are positively selected by interaction with antigen, and this leads to an increase in the average affinity of the antibodies produced. 

Within both of the light and heavy chains are regions of amino acid sequences (primary structures) which are constant, that is, they are the same for each type of antibody molecule we will consider. There are five types of antibodies and five sets of constant amino acid sequences for the heavy chains. The light chains have a... 

Gm and Inv are amino acid sequences occurring in the light and heavy chains of immunoglobulins (16, 18). Antibodies specific to the Gm and Inv groups are found in some patients suffering from rheumatoid arthritis and in some healthy people. 

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