Kinetic maturation of an immune response - PubMed (original) (raw)

. 1991 Aug 8;352(6335):530-2.

doi: 10.1038/352530a0.

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Kinetic maturation of an immune response

J Foote et al. Nature. 1991.

Abstract

Is the affinity maturation of antibodies under thermodynamic or kinetic control, or both? We compared the physical constants of hapten binding by antibodies from 2-phenyl-5-oxazolone-specific hybridomas from primary, secondary and tertiary responses. In addition to an increase in equilibrium constant, there was a shift in the antibody repertoire after the primary response towards an immunoglobulin family with an extremely high on-rate constant. This shift occurred in spite of the average or below-average affinity of this group of antibodies. This is consistent with B-lymphocyte proliferation being subject to a kinetic selection, with a premium on binding target antigens rapidly, in parallel with a thermodynamic selection based on binding tightly.

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