COMPLEMENTARITY, SPECIFICITY AND THE NATURE OF EPITOPES AND PARATOPESIN MULTIVALENT INTERACTIONS

Structural elements of an antibody (Ab) or antigen (Ag) distant from t he actual sites mediating contact between Ah and Ag can exert substant ial influence on binding to, and discrimination among, multivalent tar gets. Consequently, multivalent molecules that express the same number of identical binding sites, but that differ in other structural featu res, can exhibit differences in their ability to discriminate between multivalent ligands. Here, Neil Greenspan and Laurence Cooper review e vidence for these effects, and explore implications of the conclusion that effective specificity in multivalent interactions is not complete ly determined by the degree of complementarity between epitopes and pa ratopes.