Paratope

As paratope, the antigen binding site of an antibody is referred to by the hypervariable regions ( complementarity determining region Sheet CDR or hypervariable region, HVR ) of the light and heavy chains of an antibody to be characterized. The paratope of the antibody binds to its matching epitope on the antigen.

These chains are antigen-specific due to the special combination of so-called V- and J- elements. In higher organisms are different V and J elements, which are connected by VDJ recombination.