What are the commonalities governing the behavior of humoral immune recognitive repertoires?

Abstract

The humoral repertoire of immune systems is large, random and somatically selected. It is derived from a germline selected repertoire by a variety of diversification mechanisms, complementation of subunits, mutation and gene conversion. However derived, the end-product must be able to recognize and rid a vast variety of pathogens. This is accomplished by viewing antigens as combinatorials of epitopes, an astuce that permits a small repertoire to respond sufficiently rapidly to a vast antigenic universe. A somatically generated repertoire, however, requires a solution to two problems. First, a somatic mechanism for a self-nonself discrimination has to be put in place. Second, the repertoire has to be coupled to the effector mechanisms in a coherent fashion. The rules governing these two mechanisms are species-independent and delineate the parameters of all immune repertoires, whatever the somatic mechanism used to generate them.