Cells of the MPC-11 mouse myeloma cell line, which produces an IgG2b immunoglobulin, were subjected to mutagenesis with Melphalan or with ICR-191, after which they were cloned in soft agar. Approximately 0.5 percent of the clones produced altered heavy chains that: (i) were the same size as or larger than the parent; (ii) no longer recognized by antibody specific for the parent gamma2b subclass...

High-rate antibody-forming cells and immunological memory cells can be selectively retained if filtered through a column coated with relevant antigen. This trapping can be blocked if the cells are incubated with an anti-immunoglobulin serum prior to column passage. A similar blocking is not observed when cells are treated with an anti-lymphocyte serum, thereby excluding the possibility that any...

Secretory IgA (sIgA) is a crucial antibody in host defense at mucosal surfaces. It is a promising antibody isotype in a variety of therapeutic settings such as passive vaccination and treatment of inflammatory disorders. However, heterologous production of this heteromultimeric protein complex is still suboptimal. The challenge is the coordinate expression of the four required polypeptides; the...

Ten lines of transgenic mice secreting transmissible gastroenteritis coronavirus (TGEV) neutralizing recombinant monoclonal antibodies (rMAbs) into the milk were generated. The rMAb light- and heavy-chain genes were assembled by fusing the genes encoding the variable modules of the murine MAb 6A.C3, which binds an interspecies conserved coronavirus epitope essential for virus infectivity, and a...

Underlying the development of antibody diversity is a unique pattern of gene organization and molecular events. THREE FAMILIES OF IMMUNOGLOBULIN GENES exist in mammals, one encoding HEAVY chains, another KAPPA chains, and the third LAMBDA chains. Each of these clusters contains one or more constant region genes and a number of variable region gene segments. The formation of a complete variable ...

Eleven monoclonal antibodies specific for a spin-labeled dinitrophenyl hapten (DNP-SL) have been produced for use in NMR studies. They have been named AN01 and AN03-AN12. The stability constants for the association of these antibodies with DNP-SL and related haptens were measured by fluorescence quenching and ranged from 5.0 X 10(4) M-1 to greater than 1.0 X 10(8) M-1. cDNA clones coding for th...

A monoclonal antibody, 2B6, has been prepared against the embryonic myosin heavy chain of rat skeletal muscle. On solid phase radioimmunoassay, 2B6 shows specificity to myosin isozymes known to contain the embryonic myosin heavy chain and on immunoblots of denatured contractile proteins and on competitive radioimmunoassay, it reacts only with the myosin heavy chain of embryonic myosin and not w...

Antibodies' protective, pathological, and therapeutic properties result from their considerable diversity. This diversity is almost limitless in potential, but actual diversity is still poorly understood. Here we use deep sequencing to characterize the diversity of the heavy-chain CDR3 region, the most important contributor to antibody binding specificity, and the constituent V, D, and J segmen...

The primary antibody response of C57BL/6 mice to the 4-hydroxy-3-nitrophenylacetyl (NP) hapten is restricted to antibody molecules expressing the NPb idiotype. This idiotype is a genetic marker for V genes in the heavy chain linkage group. In the secondary response, the frequency of NPb idiotype-positive molecules within the antibody population drops to very low values. Accordingly, isolated NP...