Antigen binding
•Ucurrent view of mechanism:
•binding of antigen occurs at 3 hypervariable segments called Acomplementarity-determining regions@ (CDR1, CDR2, and CDR3)
•these protruding CDR surfaces create an antigen- binding site (paratope) which is complementary to the 3-dimensional configuration of the antigen (epitope).
•antigen
•epitope
•light chain of Ig
•heavy chain of Ig
•paratope