THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE STRUCTURAL REPERTOIRES OF V-H GERM-LINE GENE SEGMENTS OF MICE AND HUMANS - IMPLICATION FOR THE MOLECULAR MECHANISM OF THE IMMUNE-RESPONSE

Although human and murine antibodies are similar when considering thei r diversification strategies, they differ in the proportion by which k appa and lambda type chains are present in their receptive V-L reperto ires. It has been shown that this difference implies a divergence in t he structural repertoire of the kappa and lambda genes of these specie s. Nonetheless, the differences in V-H have not been systematically st udied. In this paper a systematic characterization of the V-H structur al repertoire of mice is made? so that a comparison with the V-H struc tural repertoire of humans, described in detail elsewhere, could be pr operly accomplished. Our study shows the structural repertoire of mice to be dominated by canonical structure class 1-2 (similar to 60%), wh ile in humans the dominant one is class 1-3 (similar to 40%). Analysis of the evolutionary relationships between human and mice suggest that this divergence may have a functional meaning. The implications of su ch findings are discussed. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights r eserved.