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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2014 Jul 1.
Published in final edited form as: Mol Aspects Med. 2012 Jul 10;34(4):813–825. doi: 10.1016/j.mam.2012.06.008

Figure 4. V(D)J recombination.

Figure 4

A. Schematic diagram of V(D)J recombination. A 12 (gray triangle) and 23 (blue triangle) RSS are bound by the same RAG1/2 complex (green square). Couple cleavage occurs to generate the two products of the reaction hairpin sealed coding ends (left) and blunt signal ends (right). The hairpins are opened by Artemis, repaired and ligated by the NHEJ pathway that creates a novel coding junction (yellow rectangle) between the two coding gene segments. The signal ends are repaired by the NHEJ pathway.

B. Schematic of an inaccessible or accessible RSS. Inacessible RSS chromatin (top) has been correlated with DNA methylation (filled red circles), high nucleosome occupancy (gray ovals), H3K9me and a lack of transcription (crossed out arrow). Accessible RSS chromatin (bottom) has been correlated with loss of DNA methylation (open red circles), nucleosome loss or repositioning (green ovals), H3K4me3, H3 and H4 acetylation, and active transcription (arrow).