I'm away this weekend sorting out weddings and grad applications, so have a video! This is probably the best explanation of antibody structure I've ever come across, so well worth watching for anyone trying to wrap their head around the immune system. As a bit of background information antibodies are what bind to antigens (i.e molecules that are recognised as not being part of the body and may be pathogenic) and can help destroy them. Antibodies must therefore have a very strong and stable structure, but also must have very variable regions that allow different antibodies to recognise a range of different antigens.
Essential Cell Biology, Second Edition
by Alberts, Bray, Hopkin, Johnson, Lewis, Raff, Roberts, Walter
copyright 2004 by Garland Science Publishing
And i'm still looking for more posts for the
MolBio carnival on the 6th December! If you've written anything concerning the innards of cells over the last month, please submit your post
here - carnivals are a great way of gaining readers and getting yourself noticed.
Nice! Maybe I should do a post on VDJ recombination for the Mol bio carnival. It's not exactly new stuff, but I think it's one of the coolest processes of gene expression around.
ReplyDeleteVJD recombination is definitely very awesome - the only time somatic cells in euks really get to cut and paste their DNA around, and of course highly useful!
ReplyDeleteActually, there's an analogous process in very primative vertebrates (hagfish/lampreys) that have a gene rearrangements of receptors, but they have leucine-rich repeats instead of Ig folds. It's not RAG mediated - they have some other recombinase, but they seem to have T-like cells and B-like cells. Crazy!
ReplyDelete