How and why 41S-2 antibody subunits acquire the ability to catalyze decomposition of the conserved sequence of gp41 of HIV-1.

It has become well known that antibodies obtained by immunization with the ground state of peptides can display proteolytic activity. Our antibody light chain produced by immunization with the peptide RGPDRPEGIEEEGGERDRD, a highly conserved sequence in envelope gp41 of HIV-1 showed the ability to cleave this peptide. Moreover, its heavy chain also decomposed the peptide, although this occurred at lower activity levels compared with the light chain, while the whole antibody did not show any catalytic activity. From molecular modeling, the light and heavy chains of the antibody were deduced to possess catalytic triads (Asp, His, and Ser) in their steric conformations, which may be responsible for the observed proteolytic activity.