Developmental aspects of immunoglobulins and antibodies
Main Article Content
Abstract
This short review discusses the evolution of immunoglobulins and the development of the diversity of antibodies. Birds and mammals represent two lines of development having divided more than 300 million years ago. In the immunoglobulins and antibody-systems there are many similarities which, however, are based on analogies. In this sense the dominant humoral type of immunoglobulin is IgY in birds as opposed to IgG in the mammals. Also, the mechanisms differ which leads to the diversity of antibodies. In mammals predominantly recombination of gen-segments and somatic mutations lead to this diversity, in birds genconversation shows a greater significance. In this way comparable results are produced through different structures or mechanisms.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is appropriately cited (CC-BY). Copyright on any article in ALTEX is retained by the author(s).