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Animal profile
Lama glama
The llama is a domesticated South American camelid, bred from the wild guanaco several thousand years ago and used chiefly as a pack animal. It has no hump, padded two-toed feet, and a habit of spitting mainly at other llamas.
Camelids produce antibodies made of heavy chains alone, without the light chains that all other mammalian antibodies require. The binding fragment of these, called a nanobody, is small enough to reach targets conventional antibodies cannot.
Camelids make antibodies with no light chains at all. The single binding domain from those antibodies can be produced alone, is unusually small and stable, and has become the basis of a licensed medicine and a large research toolkit.