What are the commonalities governing the behavior of humoral immune recognitive repertoires?

@article{citeulike:2915333, abstract = {The humoral repertoire of immune systems is large, random and somatically selected. It is derived from a germline selected repertoire by a variety of diversification mechanisms, complementation of subunits, mutation and gene conversion. However derived, the end-product must be able to recognize and rid a vast variety of pathogens. This is accomplished by viewing antigens as combinatorials of epitopes, an astuce that permits a small repertoire to respond sufficiently rapidly to a vast antigenic universe. A somatically generated repertoire, however, requires a solution to two problems. First, a somatic mechanism for a self-nonself discrimination has to be put in place. Second, the repertoire has to be coupled to the effector mechanisms in a coherent fashion. The rules governing these two mechanisms are species-independent and delineate the parameters of all immune repertoires, whatever the somatic mechanism used to generate them.}, author = {Cohn, Melvin }, booktitle = {Antibody repertoire development}, citeulike-article-id = {2915333}, doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dci.2005.06.015}, journal = {Developmental \& Comparative Immunology}, keywords = {evolution, immune}, number = {1-2}, pages = {19--42}, posted-at = {2008-06-22 17:55:42}, priority = {2}, title = {What are the commonalities governing the behavior of humoral immune recognitive repertoires?}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dci.2005.06.015}, volume = {30}, year = {2006} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:2915333 L3 - citeulike-article-id:2915333 TI - What are the commonalities governing the behavior of humoral immune recognitive repertoires? T2 - Antibody repertoire development JF - Developmental & Comparative Immunology VL - 30 IS - 1-2 SP - 19 EP - 42 N2 - The humoral repertoire of immune systems is large, random and somatically selected. It is derived from a germline selected repertoire by a variety of diversification mechanisms, complementation of subunits, mutation and gene conversion. However derived, the end-product must be able to recognize and rid a vast variety of pathogens. This is accomplished by viewing antigens as combinatorials of epitopes, an astuce that permits a small repertoire to respond sufficiently rapidly to a vast antigenic universe. A somatically generated repertoire, however, requires a solution to two problems. First, a somatic mechanism for a self-nonself discrimination has to be put in place. Second, the repertoire has to be coupled to the effector mechanisms in a coherent fashion. The rules governing these two mechanisms are species-independent and delineate the parameters of all immune repertoires, whatever the somatic mechanism used to generate them. KW - evolution KW - immune AU - Cohn, Melvin PY - 2006/// UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dci.2005.06.015 ER -