Back

Conformational features and interaction mechanisms of VHH antibodies with β-hairpin-like CDR-H3: A case of Nb8-HigB2 interaction.

Yamamoto, K.; Nagatoishi, S.; Nakakido, M.; Kuroda, D.; Tsumoto, K.

2023-07-02 biochemistry
10.1101/2023.07.02.547379 bioRxiv
Show abstract

{beta}-hairpin conformation is regarded as an important basic motif to form and regulate protein-protein interactions. Single-domain VHH antibodies are potential therapeutic and diagnostic tools, and the third complementarity-determining regions of the heavy chains (CDR-H3s) of these antibodies are critical for antigen recognition. Although the sequences and conformations of the CDR-H3s are diverse, CDR-H3s sometimes adopt {beta}-hairpin-like conformations. However, characteristic features and interaction mechanisms of {beta}-hairpin-like CDR-H3s remain to be fully elucidated. In this study, we investigated the molecular recognition of the anti-HigB2 VHH antibody Nb8, which has a CDR-H3 that forms a {beta}-hairpin-like conformation. The interaction was analyzed by evaluation of alanine-scanning mutants, molecular dynamics simulations, and hydrogen/deuterium exchange mass spectrometry. These experiments demonstrated that positions 93 and 94 (Chothia numbering) in framework region 3, which is right outside CDR-H3 by definition, play pivotal roles in maintaining structural stability and binding properties of Nb8. These findings will facilitate design and optimization of single-domain antibodies.

Matching journals

The top 11 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.