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Updated: Aug 12, 2026

Generation of Lymph Node-fat Pad Chimeras for the Study of Lymph Node Stromal Cell Origin
Published on: December 16, 2013
The role of the non-homologous end-joining pathway in lymphocyte development
Sean Rooney1, Jayanta Chaudhuri, Frederick W Alt
1Howard Hughes Medical Institute, The Children's Hospital, The Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School and The Center for Blood Research, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Abstract:
One of the most toxic insults a cell can incur is a disruption of its linear DNA in the form of a double-strand break (DSB). Left unrepaired, or repaired improperly, these lesions can result in cell death or neoplastic transformation. Despite these dangers, lymphoid cells purposely introduce DSBs into their genome to maximize the diversity and effector functions of their antigen receptor genes. While the generation of breaks requires distinct lymphoid-specific factors, their resolution requires various ubiquitously expressed DNA-repair proteins, known collectively as the non-homologous end-joining pathway. In this review, we discuss the factors that constitute this pathway as well as the evidence of their involvement in two lymphoid-specific DNA recombination events.
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