ABG: VIR.II
Statistics and Aim
The first sequence of an antibody was determined in the middle of 1960's (Hilschmann
& Craig, 1965). At the beginnings of the 1970's, Elvin A. Kabat and Tai Te Wu compiled all the complete and partial antibody sequences
published at that time; 77 in total (Wu &
Kabat, 1970). That was the first version of the Kabat
Database; currently the most complete compilation of sequences of proteins of immunological interest (Johnson
& Wu, 2000). The number of antibody sequences in the Kabat Database has been increasing exponentially:
There are 19,382 sequences today (last update: July, 5, 2000):
|
Complete sequences |
All sequences |
| VH |
2,866 |
11,841 |
| Vkappa |
457 |
5,282 |
| Vlambda |
527 |
2,259 |
| total |
3,850 |
19,382 |
As many as 7,989 sequences have their specificity
reported (4,547 from VH and 3,442 from VL [kappa +
lambda]). There are sequences for 1,047 different specificities (click here to see
the list of specificities), isolated from around 70 different species (click here to see the list of species).We expect 1,600 new sequences at the end of this year:
To have access to this ever-increasing information, here we offer an interface
with the antibody sequences compiled in Kabat Database. Our interface, originally called VIR:
Variable domains of the Immune system Receptors and developed since 1995 for PCs (Almagro et al., 1995), allows
an easy recovery of the antibody aminoacid and nucleotide sequences. The output is a multiple sequence alignment with predefined
characteristics (i.e. species and/or specificity). Here you will find a more detailed description
of VIR.II, the current version of VIR for the WWW.
Index