Standard conformations for the canonical structures of immunoglobulins

Bissan Al-Lazikani, Arthur M. Lesk, Cyrus Chothia

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

615 Scopus citations

Abstract

A comparative analysis of the main-chain conformation of the L1, L2, L3, H1 and H2 hypervariable regions in 17 immunoglobulin structures that have been accurately determined at high resolution is described. This involves 79 hypervariable regions in all. We also analysed a part of the H3 region in 12 of the 15 V(H) domains considered here. On the basis of the residues at key sites the 79 hypervariable regions can be assigned to one of 18 different canonical structures. We show that 71 of these hypervariable regions have a conformation that is very close to what can be defined as a 'standard' conformation of each canonical structure. These standard conformations are described in detail. The other eight hypervariable regions have small deviations from the standard conformations that, in six cases, involve only the rotation of a single peptide group. Most H3 hypervariable regions have the same conformation in the part that is close to the framework and the details of this conformation are also described here.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)927-948
Number of pages22
JournalJournal of Molecular Biology
Volume273
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 7 1997

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Structural Biology
  • Molecular Biology

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