Monoclonal AKR/J thymic leukemias contain multiple JH immunoglobulin gene rearrangements

We have examined the patterns of heavy-chain immunoglobulin gene rearrangement and provirus integration in seven murine leukemia virus-induced thymic leukemias from AKR/J mice. In five of the seven tumors examined, there were between two and five rearrangements of the heavy-chain immunoglobulin J (JH) segment. Except for one case, the rearranged JH segments are present in less than one copy per cell, indicating that these tumors contain subpopulations of thymocytes with differing JH rearrangements. Nevertheless, each tumor is probably of monoclonal origin because the cells in a given tumor contain a common set of randomly integrated murine leukemia proviruses. Our results indicate that the JH segments rearranged within a few cell divisions after tumor cell proliferation began and may, therefore, identify a specific stage in T-cell differentiation when tumorigenesis occurs.