Sugar Determines Antibody Activity

摘要

Antibodies come in many flavors to confront the bewildering array of pathogens to be encountered in one's lifetime. At the structural level, this is achieved by an extensive variability in the sites that interact with foreign pathogen-associated molecules (antigens) that typically elicit an immune response. The remainder of the antibody molecule is much more conserved, as befits its primary role in binding to a limited set of effector molecules that control inflammatory responses and trigger antigen elimination.