Figure 1.

Sequence alignment of the 39 functional genes of the human Vh locus. The alignment includes the 3′ end of Vh exon 2, the three RSS regions (heptamer, 23-bp spacer, and nonamer), and the 3′ flanking sequence. All sequences were taken from the complete sequence of the human Vh locus (6). The human Vh gene segments are classified into seven families (of which family 7 is not included in this alignment because no functional Vh gene segment has been described for this family); the first number of each gene name refers to the family, and the second number designates the ordinal position on chromosome 14 (6).