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Induction and Assessment of Class Switch Recombination in Purified Murine B Cells
09:49

Induction and Assessment of Class Switch Recombination in Purified Murine B Cells

Published on: August 13, 2010

R-loops at immunoglobulin class switch regions in the chromosomes of stimulated B cells

Kefei Yu1, Frederic Chedin, Chih-Lin Hsieh

  • 1USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, Room 5428, University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine, 1441 Eastlake Avenue, MC 9176, Los Angeles, CA 90033, USA.

Nature Immunology
|April 8, 2003
PubMed

The mechanism responsible for immunoglobulin class switch recombination is unknown. Previous work has shown that class switch sequences have the unusual property of forming RNA-DNA hybrids when transcribed in vitro. Here we show that the RNA-DNA hybrid structure that forms in vitro is an R-loop with a displaced guanine (G)-rich strand that is single-stranded. This R-loop structure exists in vivo in B cells that have been stimulated to transcribe the gamma3 or the gamma2b switch region. The length of the R-loops can exceed 1 kilobase. We propose that this distinctive DNA structure is important in the class switch recombination mechanism

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