On the mechanism of antibody synthesis: a species comparison of L-chains.

Abstract
The results of sequence analysis of the N-terminal regions of a number of human and mouse L-chains is presented. Several theories of antibody formation are discussed in the light of these and earlier structural findings. The most reasonable theory of L-chain formation seems to be one in which many genes code for the amino terminal halves of the molecules, while a single gene codes for the remainder. Mechanisms for synthesizing the complete L-chain from the information contained in a "specificity" gene and the "common" gene are discussed.