S. A. Bobrovnik, M. O. Demchenko, S. V. Komisarenko

Palladin Institute of Biochemistry, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv;
e-mail: s-bobrov@bk.ru

The features of monovalent and bivalent binding­ of receptors (or antibodies) with a polyvalent ligand (or with an antigen) are considered. It is shown that the rigid connection of the binding­ sites of the receptor brings to high increase of binding affinity for the corresponding ligand, but only in case if its epitopes are fully complementary to both sites of the receptor binding. If not, then there is no advantage of the binding of bivalent receptor before univalent binding. If the binding sites of the receptor are connected by a flexible linker, then regardless of location of epitopes of the corresponding ligand there is the successful fastening of receptor and ligand. Exactly the connection by a flexible linker is used by Nature in most cases at constructing of polyvalent receptors.

Keywords: affinity, antibody-antigen interaction, avidity