Antibody-specific model of amino acid substitution for immunological inferences from alignments of antibody sequences.

ABSTRACT: Antibodies are glycoproteins produced by the immune system as a dynamically adaptive line of defense against invading pathogens. Very elegant and specific mutational mechanisms allow B lymphocytes to produce a large and diversified repertoire of antibodies, which is modified and enhanced throughout all adulthood. One of these mechanisms is somatic hypermutation, which stochastically mutates nucleotides in the antibody genes, forming new sequences with different properties and, eventually, higher affinity and selectivity to the pathogenic target. As somatic hypermutation involves fast mutation of antibody sequences, this process can be described using a Markov substitution model of molecular evolution. Here, using large sets of antibody sequences from mice and humans, we infer an empirical

SUBMITTER: Mirsky A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4327158 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature