Figure 1

Library construction. (a) Schematic outline of the steps followed during library construction. The critical steps are: introduction of tailored CDR3 loops in an unique human scFv framework; removal of non-expressed clones by fusion with the CAT enzyme and selection on CAM plates; recombination of the 13 VH and 5 VL libraries, and display on phage. (b) Summary of the CDR3 loops collected in the database. (c) Distribution of the amino acids at each position of the 5 amino acid long VH CDR3s from 55 rearranged human antibodies (D), 43 sequenced clones from the library (E), and predicted from the oligonucleotide sequence H3_5 given in additional file 2 (T).