Complete amino acid sequence of the Fc region of a human delta chain.

The complete amino acid sequence of an Fc-like fragment designated Fc delta (t) and obtained by limited proteolysis with trypsin of an intact myeloma IgD protein (NIG-65) has been determined. The fragment contains 226 amino acid residues and has a molecular weight of 32,000 per monomeric unit. It has three glucosamine oligosaccharides at asparagine residues 68, 159, and 210. Of these, glucosamine-159 is characteristic of the delta chain and has no counterpart position in any of the other classes. On the other hand, glucosamine-68 is shared by gamma, mu, and epsilon, and glucosamine-210 is shared by alpha and mu. Although the Fc delta (t) has the common framework structure of immunoglobulins, its sequence has many individual characteristics when its two domains are compared separately with the counterpart domain of other heavy chains. Such comparison has shown that the two Fc domains of the delta chain should be placed in an independent branch in topology; for all the other classes, the Fc domains are paired well with their counterparts. The comparison has also shown that there are three prominent gaps by which each domain can be divided into two homologous halves. For each class of immunoglobulin, a moderate degree of internal homology exists between the first half and the second half of each domain of the Fc, suggesting that the primordial gene may have coded for a unit about the size of a half domain. Based on this observation together with sequence comparisons, a possible genetic mechanism is proposed for the origin and evolution of the genes for immunoglobulin domains.