Table 1.
Number of human Ig genes and alleles in IMGT/GENE-DB.
| Gene type | Functional genesa | Total (main locus) | Total (including orphons) | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Genes | Allelesb | Genes | Alleles | Genes | Alleles | |
| IGHV | 57 | 311 | 159 | 503 | 197 | 564 |
| IGKV | 41 | 72 | 77 | 115 | 109 | 149 |
| IGLV | 34 | 87 | 80 | 155 | 84 | 159 |
| IGHD | 23 | 30 | 27 | 34 | 37 | 44 |
| IGHJ | 6 | 13 | 9 | 19 | – | – |
| IGKJ | 5 | 9 | 5 | 9 | – | – |
| IGLJ | 5 | 7 | 7 | 10 | – | – |
| IGHC | 9 | 84 | 11 | 91 | 12 | 93 |
| IGKC | 1 | 5 | 1 | 5 | – | – |
| IGLC | 5 | 17 | 7 | 21 | 10 | 25 |
These data are accurate as of 9 April 2021. Note that the IMGT/GENE-DB contains mostly mapped genomic Ig sequences but, as mentioned in this review, there is a lack of such data. The actual numbers of all possible Ig genes and alleles are likely higher than those presented in this table.
aGenes with at least 1 allele described as functional.
bSome alleles of the genes labelled as functional might not be functional after all.