Langman R E
Int J Clin Lab Res. 1992;22(2):63-8. doi: 10.1007/BF02591398.
The humoral immune response protects against a very large array of pathogens which attempt to escape immune recognition by changing the antigens they display. When looked at from the point of two competing sets of DNA (i.e., the pathogens vs. the host), there is a vastly larger pool of mutating pathogen DNA than in, say, a mouse. The stratagems that allow a tiny fraction of the mouse's genome to effectively compete with a hugely diverse array of pathogens is analyzed in terms of how antibody functions and how the immune system avoids such pitfalls as self-recognition and destruction. This review is a more general description of a lengthy series of papers which detailed the evolution of the Protecton. Starting from the obvious, that is the concentration-dependence of antibody function, it is apparent that the functional antibody repertoire must be relatively small if a sufficient concentration of specific antibody is to be produced in time to arrest the growth of pathogens and eventually eliminate them. Thus, commonly quoted estimates of antibody repertoires in the range from greater than 10(10) to "complete" (infinite?) must be seriously in error. Other well known "facts", such as D-diversity, and B cell signaling by receptor aggregation are also shown to be lacking in biological commonsense.
体液免疫反应可抵御大量病原体，这些病原体试图通过改变其展示的抗原以逃避免疫识别。从两组相互竞争的DNA（即病原体与宿主）的角度来看，与例如小鼠相比，病原体DNA的突变库要大得多。从小鼠基因组的一小部分能够有效对抗种类繁多的病原体的策略方面，分析了抗体的功能以及免疫系统如何避免诸如自我识别和自我破坏等陷阱。本综述更全面地描述了一系列详细阐述保护子（Protecton）进化的论文。从显而易见的方面开始，即抗体功能的浓度依赖性，如果要及时产生足够浓度的特异性抗体以阻止病原体生长并最终消除它们，那么功能性抗体库必然相对较小。因此，通常引用的抗体库估计值在大于10¹⁰到“完整”（无限？）范围内肯定存在严重错误。其他众所周知的“事实”，如D多样性以及受体聚集引发的B细胞信号传导，也被证明缺乏生物学常识。
