Do you think in the future it will be possible to predict antigen specific antibodies like prediction of B-cell epitopes that can induce specific class of antibodies see: http://www.biologydirect.com/content/8/1/27/abstract
Of course, in molecular modeling you can predict any specific structure (near 5200 structure) base on its score ! higher score in docking, showing nearest structure !
I read the abstract, but don't know if this technique was very successful as they say "few residues were found to be preferred", so I'm not sure if the results can be used to reliably predict antibody class. It has been a while since I received my Ph.D., but the paradigm at that time was that memory B cells went through class switching somewhat sequentially, and once a class switch was made for a specific clone it could not be reversed as the DNA rearrangement is permanent. However, if you are looking at a population of polyclonal B cells, there might be some value to this. In vivo there are cytokines that might contribute to class switching as well.
Very unlikely. Ab class switch is not an inherent/intrinsic property of the antigen but determined by the environement, cytokines, in which b cells recognize the antigen.
Here's an example that was outlined in a Nature Biotechnology paper from 2010. 'Monoclonal antibodies isolated without screening by analyzing the variable-gene repertoire of plasma cells' http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20802495?dopt=Abstract&holding=npg