Regulation of IgM and IgD heavy chain gene expression: effect of abrogation of intergenic transcriptional termination

Early IgM+ B cells express little or no membrane IgD due to the low abundance of delta mRNA. Extensive transcriptional termination regulated by sequences in the intronic region between mu and delta heavy chain genes may be the primary reason for the lack of delta gene transcription. We have examined the effect of deletion of these sequences on the regulation of IgM and IgD heavy chain gene expression in transfectants as well as mice carrying this otherwise intact transgene. By run-on transcriptional measurement, we show that the delta exons are transcribed in bone marrow B cells from these transgenic mice. However, in spite of the induced premature synthesis of the full-length mu-delta transcript in pre-B cells, processing to delta mRNA does not occur until the lymphocytes express cell surface IgM. Therefore, during B cell development, synthesis of the full-length transcript is a necessary but not sufficient condition for initiation of delta mRNA synthesis. Furthermore, unexpectedly, the abrogation of transcriptional termination was found to also affect the processing of the primary transcript to microM mRNA. These results show that expression of IgD in primary B cells is stringently regulated and closely linked to IgM expression.