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How to make ends meet in V(D)J recombination

U Grawunder1, E Harfst

  • 1Universitaetsklinikum Ulm, Department of Immunology, Albert-Einstein-Allee 11, D-89081, Ulm, Germany. ulf.grawunder@medizin.uni-ulm.de

Current Opinion in Immunology
|March 3, 2001
PubMed

In most vertebrate species analyzed so far, the diversity of soluble or membrane-bound antigen-receptors expressed by B and T lymphocytes is generated by V(D)J recombination. During this process, the coding regions for the variable domains of antigen-receptors are created by the joining of subexons that are randomly selected from arrays of tandemly repeated V, D (sometimes) and J gene segments. This involves the site-specific cleavage of chromosomal DNA by the lymphocyte-specific recombination-activating gene (RAG)-1/2 proteins, which appear to have originated from an ancient transposable element. The DNA double-strand breaks created by RAG proteins are subsequently processed and rejoined by components of the nonhomologous DNA end-joining pathway, which is conserved in all eukaryotic organisms - from unicellular yeast up to highly complex mammalian species.

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