Skip to main content
PMC home page
The Journal of Experimental Medicine logoLink to The Journal of Experimental Medicine
. 1974 Oct 1;140(4):1117–1121. doi: 10.1084/jem.140.4.1117

THE STRUCTURAL BASIS FOR BINDING OF COMPLEMENT BY IMMUNOGLOBULIN M

Mary M Hurst 1, John E Volanakis 1, Raymond B Hester 1, Robert M Stroud 1, J Claude Bennett 1
PMCID: PMC2139640  PMID: 4427090

Abstract

An insight into the structural features of human IgM that are responsible for its capacity to bind the first component of complement (C) has been obtained by examining the ability of IgM subfragments to bind active C1 (C1). The smallest two fragments found to bind C1 were the major CNBr fragment of the Fc portion of IgM and the CH4 fragment of the carboxy-terminal domain. The smallest fragment which fixes C1 has a disaggregated mol wt of 6,800, consists of 60 residues, and contains no carbohydrate. Structural considerations and sequence overlaps suggest that the amino-terminal side of the CH4 domain (24 amino acid residues) might be responsible for fixing C1.

Full Text

The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (310.7 KB).

Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

  1. Augener W., Grey H. M., Cooper N. R., Müller-Eberhard H. J. The reaction of monomeric and aggregated immunoglobulins with C1. Immunochemistry. 1971 Nov;8(11):1011–1020. doi: 10.1016/0019-2791(71)90489-7. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  2. Edelman G. M., Cunningham B. A., Gall W. E., Gottlieb P. D., Rutishauser U., Waxdal M. J. The covalent structure of an entire gammaG immunoglobulin molecule. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1969 May;63(1):78–85. doi: 10.1073/pnas.63.1.78. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  3. Edelman G. M., Gall W. E. The antibody problem. Annu Rev Biochem. 1969;38:415–466. doi: 10.1146/annurev.bi.38.070169.002215. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  4. Kehoe J. M., Fougereau M. Immunoglobulin peptide with complement fixing activity. Nature. 1969 Dec 20;224(5225):1212–1213. doi: 10.1038/2241212a0. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  5. Painter R. H., Yasmeen D., Assimeh S. N., Poulik M. D. Complement fixing and macrophage opsonizing activities associated with beta2 microglobulin. Immunol Commun. 1974;3(1):19–34. doi: 10.3109/08820137409055743. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  6. Peterson P. A., Cunningham B. A., Berggård I., Edelman G. M. 2 -Microglobulin--a free immunoglobulin domain. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1972 Jul;69(7):1697–1701. doi: 10.1073/pnas.69.7.1697. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  7. Putnam F. W., Florent G., Paul C., Shinoda T., Shimizu A. Complete amino acid sequence of the Mu heavy chain of a human IgM immunoglobulin. Science. 1973 Oct 19;182(4109):287–291. doi: 10.1126/science.182.4109.287. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  8. Zikan J., Bennett J. C. Oxidative sulfitolysis of human IgM. J Immunol. 1971 Apr;106(4):1136–1138. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  9. Zikán J., Bennett J. C. Isolation of F(c)5mu and Fabmu fragments of human IgM. Eur J Immunol. 1973 Jul;3(7):415–419. doi: 10.1002/eji.1830030708. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

Articles from The Journal of Experimental Medicine are provided here courtesy of The Rockefeller University Press

RESOURCES