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Updated: May 10, 2026

Analysis of Somatic Hypermutation in the JH4 intron of Germinal Center B cells from Mouse Peyer's Patches
09:35

Analysis of Somatic Hypermutation in the JH4 intron of Germinal Center B cells from Mouse Peyer's Patches

Published on: April 20, 2021

The IgH 3' regulatory region controls somatic hypermutation in germinal center B cells

Pauline Rouaud1, Christelle Vincent-Fabert, Alexis Saintamand

  • 1Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) UMR 7276, Université de Limoges, 87025 Limoges, France.

The Journal of Experimental Medicine
|July 5, 2013
PubMed

Interactions with cognate antigens recruit activated B cells into germinal centers where they undergo somatic hypermutation (SHM) in V(D)J exons for the generation of high-affinity antibodies. The contribution of IgH transcriptional enhancers in SHM is unclear. The Eμ enhancer upstream of Cμ has a marginal role, whereas the influence of the IgH 3' regulatory region (3'RR) enhancers (hs3a, hs1,2, hs3b, and hs4) is controversial. To clarify the latter issue, we analyzed mice lacking the whole 30-kb extent of the IgH 3'RR. We show that SHM in VH rearranged regions is almost totally abrogated in 3'RR-deficient mice, whereas the simultaneous Ig heavy chain transcription rate is only partially reduced. In contrast, SHM in κ light chain genes remains unaltered, acquitting for any global SHM defect in our model. Beyond class switch recombination, the IgH 3'RR is a central element that controls heavy chain accessibility to activation-induced deaminase modifications including SHM.

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