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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America logoLink to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
. 1992 Apr 1;89(7):2799–2803. doi: 10.1073/pnas.89.7.2799

Three lymphoid-specific factors account for all junctional diversity characteristic of somatic assembly of T-cell receptor and immunoglobulin genes.

S Kallenbach 1, N Doyen 1, M Fanton d'Andon 1, F Rougeon 1
PMCID: PMC48750  PMID: 1557386

Abstract

The somatic diversity immunoglobulin and T-cell receptor diversity is largely provided by the junctional variation created during site-specific rearrangement of separately encoded gene segments. Using a transient transfection assay, we demonstrate that the recombination activating genes Rag1 and Rag2 direct site-specific rearrangement on an artificial substrate in poorly differentiated as well as in differentiated nonlymphoid cell lines. In addition to a high frequency of precise recombination events, coding joints show deletions and more rarely P-nucleotide insertions, reminiscent of immunoglobulin and T-cell receptor junctions found in fetal tissues. N-region insertions, which are characteristic of adult junctional diversity, are obtained at high frequency upon transfection of a terminal deoxynucleotidyltransferase expression vector together with Rag1 and Rag2. These results show that only three lymphoid-specific factors are needed to generate all types of junctional diversity observed during lymphoid development.

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Selected References

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