Abstract
From an evolutionary point of view, the complementarity-determining regions of antibodies are distinct from other proteins including the framework regions of antibodies. A search for identical nucleotide sequences of eighty-four 15 consecutive bp in the complementarity-determining regions of human antibody heavy chains with other known sequences yielded four matches: two sequential 15-bp matches, or one 16-bp match, with the coding region of a sea-urchin testis histone H2b-2, one 15-bp match with the promotor region of a cauliflower mosaic virus inclusion body protein, and a 15-bp match with an intron between exons 1 and 2 of human factor IX. As a control, an identical search of eighty-four 15 consecutive bp in the framework regions of human antibody heavy chains yielded no matches with other sequences except those from other antibody framwork regions. Since the currently available nucleotide sequence database used in the search consisted of about 1 × 107 bp, finding such matches in the complementarity-determining regions might not be random.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 231-234 |
Number of pages | 4 |
Journal | Journal of Theoretical Biology |
Volume | 131 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Mar 21 1988 |
Funding
The research was supported by a grant from the Leukemia Research Foundation of Chicago. Work with the PROPHET computer system was supported by National Institutes of Health Contract NO12-RR-8-2118.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Statistics and Probability
- Modeling and Simulation
- General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
- General Immunology and Microbiology
- General Agricultural and Biological Sciences
- Applied Mathematics