Mini-Antibody Affinity Chromatography of Lysozyme

Multiple noncovalent forces do play a role in the binding between a protein antigen and an antibody directed against that protein. An antigen is bound by the antigen binding site of an antibody that consists of three hypervariable segments (complementarity determining regions, CDRs) of the light chain (L1, L2, L3) and three of the heavy chain (H1, H2, H3) (see Fig. 1 ).   Fig. 1.  Schematic representation of the antigen-binding site. The hypervariable segment L1, L2, L3 of the light chain and H1, H2, H3 of the heavy chain of an immunoglobulin G molecule do have relatively small (e.g., L2) and relatively large (e.g., H1) contact areas with the epitope of an antigen (A g ).