Investigating Substitutions in Antibody-Antigen Complexes Using Molecular Dynamics: A Case Study with Broad-spectrum, Influenza A Antibodies.

ABSTRACT: In studying the binding of host antibodies to the surface antigens of pathogens, the structural and functional characterization of antibody-antigen complexes by X-ray crystallography and binding assay is important. However, the characterization requires experiments that are typically time consuming and expensive: thus, many antibody-antigen complexes are under-characterized. For vaccine development and disease surveillance, it is often vital to assess the impact of amino acid substitutions on antibody binding. For example, are there antibody substitutions capable of improving binding without a loss of breadth, or antigen substitutions that lead to antigenic escape? The questions cannot be answered reliably from sequence variation alone, exhaustive substitution assays are usually impractica

SUBMITTER: Lees WD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5309259 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature