The Alter Lab at the Ragon Institute largely focuses on the innate immune system and its role in fighting viruses like HIV and TB. I have been working on cloning variants of IgG1 antibodies, which will then be expressed in human embryonic kidney cells and purified to be used in other projects. Each variant has a different combination of amino acids around the Asn297 residue, which is where the glycan precursor binds as antibodies are formed. This is part of glycosylation, which plays a key role in antibody recruitment of innate immune cells by the Fc region to kill viruses. These variants may be used to better understand IgG affinity for immune cell receptors.
