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On the skew distribution of immunoglobulins and the inverted protein-folding problem
M A Jiménez-Montaño1, F Lara-Ochoa
1Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas, Universidad Veracruzana, Xalapa, Ver., Mexico.
The question of antibody specificity is discussed in the framework of the inverted protein-folding problem (i.e. the characterization of protein sequences with a common fold). A stochastic model of the immune response, patterned after a model for the distribution of words in natural languages is proposed. It is shown that the steady-state probability distribution of immunoglobulin variable-region frequencies is the Yule distribution.
The question of antibody specificity is discussed in the framework of the inverted protein-folding problem (i.e. the characterization of protein sequences with a common fold). A stochastic model of the immune response, patterned after a model for the distribution of words in natural languages is proposed. It is shown that the steady-state probability distribution of immunoglobulin variable-region frequencies is the Yule distribution.