A second promoter and enhancer element within the immunoglobulin heavy chain locus

The joining of immunoglobulin gene segments during B cell development consists of a tightly regulated series of rearrangement steps. A variety of experiments have suggested that transcription is involved in activating the locus as substrate for the V(D)J recombinase. Here, we have characterized a region located immediately upstream of the most J-proximal D element (DQ52), which contains both promoter and enhancer activities preferentially active in precursors of B cells. Interestingly, this DQ52 regulatory element is inevitably deleted in fully rearranged H chain genes. We propose that it is involved in the early activation and rearrangement events at the IgH locus.