期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：1972
卷号：69
期号：4
页码：877-881
DOI：10.1073/pnas.69.4.877
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：Protein 460 is a mouse myeloma {gamma} A2 protein that competitively binds two small haptens, 2,4-{varepsilon}-dinitrophenyl-L-lysine (Dnp-Lys) and 2-methyl-1:4-naphthaquinone thioglycollate (MenTG), to the antibody-combining region. The intact protein has a relatively inaccessible sulfhydryl group on each heavy chain. When it is substituted with a bulky reagent the binding affinity for MenTG decreases, while the binding of Dnp-Lys remains the same. Guanidine{middle dot}HCl selectively reduces binding of Dnp-Lys; dimethylsulfoxide selectively reduces binding of MenTG. Papain digestion of protein 460 followed by column chromatography gave two fractions: one contained both binding activities and the other contained the sulfhydryl group. The affinity for Dnp-Lys of the first fraction is the same as that of the whole molecule, while affinity for MenTG is decreased. Since selective alteration of one or the other binding activity can occur in different ways, it seems likely that even though the haptens compete with each other, there is some spatial separation between the groups of contact amino-acid residues involved in the binding of these two haptens. These findings do not support the hypothesis that an immunoglobulin molecule carries combining sites complementary only to a single hapten or to a structurally related series of haptens, but rather suggests that the antibody-combining site may be a polyfunctional region capable of binding several structurally dissimilar haptens. We discuss a mechanism whereby polyfunctional combining sites can give rise to an antibody population (immune serum) that has a high degree of specificity to a single hapten.
关键词：myeloma protein ; combining site ; sulfhydryl group ; antibody heterogeneity
