Regulating Antibody Diversity: Taming a Mutagen

Reshaping Antibody Diversity

Some species mount a robust antibody response despite having limited genome-encoded combinatorial diversity potential. Cows are unusual in having exceptionally long CDR H3 loops and few V regions, but the mechanism for creating diversity is not understood. Deep sequencing reveals that ultralong CDR H3s contain a remarkable complexity of cysteines, suggesting that disulfide-bonded minidomains ma...

Antibody wars: extreme diversity.

A Novel Cytidine Deaminase Affects Antibody Diversity

University of Chicago switch-specific endonuclease then cleaves the doubleChicago, Illinois 60637 strand DNA at random sites within or near Sm and the downstream S region involved in the particular switch. As the switch region repeats are varied, the endonucleAntibody molecules are encoded by immunoglobulin (Ig) ase(s) would not recognize a particular sequence but genes and are produced exclusi...

The Mutagen Hypothesis

In 1997, Stanley Prusiner was awarded the Nobel Prize for his prion hypothesis, which is still used today to describe the propagation of some of the deadliest diseases that affect the central nervous system. However, the prion hypothesis remains controversial, as it does not adequately describe the mechanism by which infection occurs, inheritance of diseases such as CJD, or variations among the...

Formaldehyde as a Mutagen in Drosophila.

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