Will Mawby asked for references dealing with the hinge.
Due to the flexibility of the IgG hinge region it is difficult to
resolve the crystal structure of this part of the molecule. There are some
papers though, that may be helpful:
Ito & Arata, "Proton nuclear magnetic resonance study on the
dynamics of the conformation of the hinge segment of human
G1 immunoglobulin" Biochemistry, 24:6467. 1985
Marquart et al,"Crystallographic refinement and atomic models of the
intact immunoglobulin molecule Kol......" J.Mol.Biol. 141,369. 1980
I've been working in the field of the functional significance of the hinge
region for a while, and since this is an extremely interresting field, I
add some more references:
Sandlie et al, "C1q binding to chimeric monoclonal IgG antibodies..
......whith shortened hinge region...." Eur.J.Immunol. 19,1599.1989
Norderhaug et al, "Chimeric mouse/human IgG3 antibodies with an IgG4-
like hinge region...." Eur.J.Immunol. 21, 2379. 1991
Brekke et al, "Activation of complement by an IgG molecule without a
genetic hinge" Nature 363,628. 1993
Hope this helps a bit
Ole Henrik Brekke
Div. of Molecular Cell Biology
Dept of Biology, University of Oslo
PO box 1050 Blindern
Oslo, Norway
Email: O.H.Brekke at bio.uio.no
