Porter, Rodney

The fundamental structure of immunoglobulins was first established by Gerald Edelman and Rodney Porter. Each chain is made up of identifiable domains some are constant in sequence and structure from one IgG to the next, others are variable. The constant domains have a characteristic structure known as the immunoglobulin fold, a well-conserved structural motif in the all /3 class of proteins (Chapter 4). There are three of these constant domains in each heavy chain and one in each light chain. The heavy and light chains also have one variable domain each, in which most of the variability in amino acid residue sequence is found. The variable domains associate to create the antigen-binding site (Fig. 5-24). 

Gerald M. Edelman and Rodney R. Porter Physiology/Medicine Structure of antibodies... 

Studies by Rodney Porter (1959) and Gerald Edehnan (1961) have provided the chemical structure of the Ab molecule. The enormous variety of Abs was explained by Frank McFarlane Burnet in 1957, based on a hypothesis of Niels Jeme dating from 1955, the now widely accepted clonal-selection theory. It describes each Ab-producing... 

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