Hi all,
I just finished mapping, via alanine-scanning, the epitopes recognised by a
few murine monoclonals raised against a human protein. To my surprise, I
find that the functional epitopes for these antibodies, i.e. those residues
in the antigen that when mutated to alanine reduces the affinity more than
3-fold, are conserved between the human and the murine version of the
protein.
One explanation would be that residues close to the epitope, that are not
conserved, 'covers' the epitope in the mouse antigen but not in the human
antigen.
Could this be the case and have any of you heard of similar observations ?
I do not know yet if the antibodies actually binds the mouse antigen, but it
will be tested soon.
Thank you in advance,
Troels
Troels Wind, Ph.D.
Laboratory of Cellular Protein Science
Department of Molecular and Structural Biology
University of Aarhus
Gustav Wieds Vej 10C
8000 Aarhus C
Denmark
Phone: (+45) 8942 5079
Fax: (+45) 8612 3178
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and
human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
-Albert Einstein
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