Conformational difference in human IgG2 disulfide isoforms revealed by hydrogen/deuterium exchange mass spectrometry.

Both recombinant and natural human IgG2 antibodies have several different disulfide bond isoforms, which possess different global structures, thermal stabilities, and biological activities. A detailed mapping of the structural difference among IgG2 disulfide isoforms, however, has not been established. In this work, we employed hydrogen/deuterium exchange mass spectrometry to study the conformation of three major IgG2 disulfide isoforms known as IgG2-B, IgG2-A1, and IgG2-A2 in two recombinant human IgG2 monoclonal antibodies. By comparing the protection factors between amino acid residues in isoforms B and A1 (the classical form), we successfully identified several local regions in which the IgG2-B isoform showed more solvent protection than the IgG2-A1 isoform. On the basis of three-dimensional structural models of IgG2, these identified regions were located on the Fab domains, close to the hinge, centered on the side where the two Fab arms faced each other in spatial proximity. We speculated that in the...