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. 2020 Aug 11;11:1943. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2020.01943

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Copyright © 2020 Gong and Ruprecht.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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Schematic structure of IgM. (A) Monomeric IgM is composed of two heavy (μ) and two light (λ/κ) chains. Each heavy or light chain contains one variable region (VH or VL) and one constant region (Cμ1-4 and Cλ/κ). (B) Pentameric IgM contains five monomers and one J chain; disulfide bonds between each monomer form the pentamer; the structure shown in (B) is based upon the recent EM image presented by Hiramoto et al. (12). There is a 50° gap where the J chain resides. (C) The IgM hexamer contains six monomers and resembles a hexagon. The J chain is generally absent in hexamers.