Antigen-Specific Markers in Immunoglobulin Peptides From Rat Immune Sera

摘要

During infections, but also in cancer and auto-immune disease, antigen-specific antibodies arise from random recombination of germline sequences and the subsequent selection of B-cells that produce antigen-specific immunoglobulins. As antibody selection starts from a limited set of germline sequences, and immunoglobulins are refined for optimal binding to a particular antigen, we expect that the complementarity determining regions (CDR; antigen binding sites) may converge to include homologous or identical sequences in different subjects. If this is the case, peptides that relate to immunoglobulin CDRs can be used as a marker for the antigen that the immune system was exposed to. Here, we tested this hypothesis in a pilot study using an animal immunization model under controlled conditions.