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Updated: May 20, 2026

Analysis of Somatic Hypermutation in the JH4 intron of Germinal Center B cells from Mouse Peyer's Patches
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Analysis of Somatic Hypermutation in the JH4 intron of Germinal Center B cells from Mouse Peyer's Patches

Published on: April 20, 2021

Germline VH/VL pairing in antibodies

Narayan Jayaram1, Pallab Bhowmick, Andrew C R Martin

  • 1Institute of Structural and Molecular Biology, Division of Biosciences, University College London, Darwin Building, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK.

Protein Engineering, Design & Selection : PEDS
|July 18, 2012
PubMed

Antibodies are key molecules of the adaptive immune response and are now a major class of biopharmaceuticals. Pairing of heavy and light chains is one of the ways of generating antibody diversity and, while little is known about mechanisms governing V(H)/V(L) pairing, previous studies have suggested that the germline source from which chains are paired is random. By selecting paired antibody protein sequences from human and mouse antibodies from the KabatMan database and mapping them onto their corresponding germline sequences, we find that pairing preferences do exist in the germline, but only for a small proportion of germline gene segments; others are much more promiscuous showing no preferences. The closest equivalent human and mouse gene families were identified and pairing preferences compared. This work may impact on the ability to generate more stable antibodies for use as biopharmaceuticals.

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