Germline-Dependent Antibody Paratope States and Pairing Specific VH-VL Interface Dynamics

Abstract

Antibodies have emerged as one of the fastest growing classes of biotherapeutic proteins. To improve the rational design of antibodies, we investigate the conformational diversity of 16 different germline combinations, which are composed of 4 different kappa light chains paired with 4 different heavy chains. In this study, we systematically show that different heavy and light chain pairings strongly influence the paratope, interdomain interaction patterns and the relative V_H-V_L interface orientations. We observe changes in conformational diversity and substantial population shifts of the complementarity determining region (CDR) loops, resulting in distinct dominant solution structures and differently favored canonical structures. Additionally, we identify conformational changes in the structural diversity of the CDR-H3 loop upon different heavy and light chain pairings, as well as upon changes in sequence and structure of the neighboring CDR loops, despite having an identical CDR-H3 loop amino acid sequence. These results can also be transferred to all CDR loops and to the relative V_H-V_L orientation, as certain paratope states favor distinct interface angle distributions. Furthermore, we directly compare the timescales of sidechain rearrangements with the well-described transition kinetics of conformational changes in the backbone of the CDR loops. We show that sidechain flexibilities are strongly affected by distinct heavy and light chain pairings and decipher germline-specific structural features co-determining stability. These findings reveal that all CDR loops are strongly correlated and that distinct heavy and light chain pairings can result in different paratope states in solution, defined by a characteristic combination of CDR loop conformations and V_H-V_L interface orientations. Thus, these results have broad implications in the field of antibody engineering, as they clearly show the importance of considering paired heavy and light chains to understand the antibody binding site, which is one of the key aspects in the design of therapeutics.

Keywords: VH-VL pairings; antibodies; backbone vs. sidechain flexibility; germlines; paratope states in solution.