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Determination of antibody structures
1Department of Molecular Biology, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA, USA.
While antibodies share a conserved structural framework, their complementarity-determining region loops are highly variable in size and sequence. Even more variable are the potential ways these loops can be used to interact with antigen. Thus, X-ray crystal structures of antibody Fab fragments and Fab-antigen complexes are critical for a detailed understanding of the antibody-antigen recognition process. This chapter describes the basic procedures necessary for the crystallization and structure determination of antibody Fab fragments by X-ray crystallography.
While antibodies share a conserved structural framework, their complementarity-determining region loops are highly variable in size and sequence. Even more variable are the potential ways these loops can be used to interact with antigen. Thus, X-ray crystal structures of antibody Fab fragments and Fab-antigen complexes are critical for a detailed understanding of the antibody-antigen recognition process. This chapter describes the basic procedures necessary for the crystallization and structure determination of antibody Fab fragments by X-ray crystallography.
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