Published on in “Science”, language — English. 4 pages.
The immune system has to regenerate new antibodies for the new pathogen and hence, the antigen buys more time for the attack. In such cases, the antigens usually alter their surface by interchanging the arrangement of the proteins and carbohydrate molecules on their external membranes. There are other mechanisms to antigenic variations as well. These include gene conversion, DNA inversions, hypermutation and the combination of cassette sequences. More
