Studies on the Variability of Immunoglobulin Sequence
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
Excerpt
The heterogeneity of the immunoglobulins is the result of three types of amino acid sequence variability: (1) The isotypic variants, which are common to all individuals of the same species and differentiate classes and types of immunoglobulins; (2) The allotypic variants, which distinguish polymorphic forms of immunoglobulins not present in all members of a given species; (3) The idiotypic variants, which characterize individual antibodies and myeloma proteins.
Studies on the amino acid sequence of the two types (κ and λ) of light chains have provided some interesting observations about the distribution of this variability along the chain. Since the earlier observation by Hilschmann and Craig (1965), confirmed by the studies of Putnam and co-workers and by Milstein in man, and by Dreyer and co-workers in mouse, it appears that idiotypic variants are localized in the N-terminal half of light chains which are specific for the clone of origin, and no...
