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In immunology, a paratope, also known as an antigen-binding site, is the part of an antibody which recognizes and binds to an antigen. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] It is a small region at the tip of the antibody's antigen-binding fragment and contains parts of the antibody's heavy and light chains .
An epitope, also known as antigenic determinant, is the part of an antigen that is recognized by the immune system, specifically by antibodies, B cells, or T cells.The part of an antibody that binds to the epitope is called a paratope.
Antibody-antigen interactions are highly specific and those that have high affinity will interact with increased bond strength and trigger downstream immune responses. The strength of the bond between the epitope of the antigen and the paratope of the antibody will determine the affinity of the interaction. [1]
The variable domain contains the paratope (the antigen-binding site), comprising a set of complementarity-determining regions, at the amino terminal end of the monomer. Each arm of the Y thus binds an epitope on the antigen.
HV3 is the most variable part. Thus these regions may be part of a paratope, the part of an antibody that recognizes and binds to an antigen. The rest of the V region between the hypervariable regions are called framework regions. Each V domain has four framework domains, namely FR1, FR2, FR3, and FR4. [4] [6]
The antibody's paratope interacts with the antigen's epitope. An antigen usually contains different epitopes along its surface arranged discontinuously, and dominant epitopes on a given antigen are called determinants. [citation needed] Antibody and antigen interact by spatial complementarity (lock and key).
The paratope on the B cell receptor comes in contact only with those amino acids that lie on the surface of the protein. The surface amino acids may actually be discontinuous in the protein's primary structure, but get juxtaposed owing to the complex protein folding patterns (as in the adjoining figure).
Paratype of Lepidothrix vilasboasi (Sick, 1959) in Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin Paratype of Cadurcotherium nouleti – MHNT. In zoology and botany, a paratype is a specimen of an organism that helps define what the scientific name of a species and other taxon actually represents, but it is not the holotype (and in botany is also neither an isotype nor a syntype).