Following initial noncovalent binding of antigen, some Igs proceed to catalyze its chemical transformation. Examples of Ig-catalyzed reactions include hydrolysis of polypeptide antigens (2, 3), hydrolysis of nucleic acids (4, 5), and various acyl transfer reactions of other antigen classes (6). Proteolytic Igs that utilize serine protease-like covalent hydrolytic pathways have been described (7,8). Serine protease-like catalytic triads have been identified in the V domains of Igs by site-directed mutagenesis and crystallography (9, 10). The catalytic mechanism involves nucleophilic attack on the electrophilic carbonyl of peptide bonds. Electrophilic phosphonate diesters originally developed as covalent probes for the nucleophilic site of serine proteases bind catalytic Igs irreversibly and inhibit their catalytic activity (7,11,12). The strength of Igantigen noncovalent binding often exceeds that of enzyme-substrate binding. An important limitation holding back the application of catalytic Igs for clearance of undesirable antigens is that their catalytic rate constants (turnover number; k cat ) are small compared with enzymes. Evidently, Ig adaptive selection is geared toward noncovalent immune complexation (the ground state stabilization step), and the ability of Igs to recognize the high energy transition state complex that must be stabilized to accelerate chemical reactions is limited. This is supported by observations that IgMs, the first and least diversified Ig class produced during B cell differentiation, express superior catalytic rate constants than IgGs produced by the cells at later stages of their adaptive differentiation (12).Accumulation of amyloid  peptide (A) 2 aggregates in the brain is thought to be a central contributor to neurodegenera-* This work was supported, in whole or in part, by National Institutes of Health Grant R01AG025304. The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked "advertisement" in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact. The nucleotide sequence(s) reported in this paper has been submitted to the GenBank TM /EBI Data Bank with accession number(s) FJ231714, FJ231715, FJ231716, FJ231717, FJ231718, FJ231719, FJ231720, FJ231721, FJ231722, and FJ231723