Underlying the development of antibody diversity is a unique pattern of gene organization and molecular events. THREE FAMILIES OF IMMUNOGLOBULIN GENES exist in mammals, one encoding HEAVY chains, another KAPPA chains, and the third LAMBDA chains. Each of these clusters contains one or more constant region genes and a number of variable region gene segments. The formation of a complete variable ...

The spoIVCA gene of Bacillus subtilis encodes a site-specific recombinase, which excises a 48-kb skin element from the chromosomal DNA by DNA rearrangement and creates a new composite gene, sigK, on the chromosome. From spoIVCA mutants, we have isolated Spo+ revertants which have no skin element but have an intact sigK gene. This result suggests that the DNA rearrangement can occur in the absen...

A rearranged c-myc gene found in a human primary giant cell carcinoma of the lung was analyzed. The rearrangement was found in the region about 6 kilobase pairs upstream of the c-myc gene. The breakpoint was joined to a sequence carrying a Line 1 (L1) family member located on chromosome 8. This in vivo rearrangement of the c-myc gene specific to tumor cells may represent one mechanism of activa...

BACKGROUND To explore the efficacy of bronchoscopic biopsy for the detection of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations and anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) gene rearrangement in lung adenocarcinoma. METHODS All patients with bronchoscopic biopsy-proven lung adenocarcinoma at the Peking Union Medical College Hospital from January 2009 to November 2011 were enrolled. Scorpion amplifi...

Recent progress in genome-scale sequencing and comparative mapping raises new challenges in studies of genome rearrangements. Although the pairwise genome rearrangement problem is well-studied, algorithms for reconstructing rearrangement scenarios for multiple species are in great need. The previous approaches to multiple genome rearrangement problem were largely based on the breakpoint distanc...

X-linked agammaglobulinemia (XLA) results from failure of B lymphocyte development. Immature B cells from a patient with XLA were found to produce truncated mu and delta immunoglobulin H chains encoded by D-JH-C (mu delta). The 5' terminal sequence of cDNA encoding the H chains is composed of D-JH with the characteristic GGTTTGAAG/CACTGTG consensus sequence utilized for VH gene rearrangement up...

Circular DNAs excised by immunoglobulin kappa chain gene rearrangements were cloned and characterized. 16 of 17 clones examined were double recombination products containing a V kappa-J kappa rearrangement (coding joint) as well as the reciprocal element (signal joint) of another V kappa-J kappa rearrangement. These products suggested multiple recombination, primary inversion, and secondary exc...

Circular DNAs excised by immunoglobulin K chain gene rearrangements were cloned and characterized. 16 of 17 clones examined were double recombination products containing aVKJK rearrangement (coding joint) as well as the reciprocal element (signal joint) of another Vfc-JK rearrangement . These products suggested multiple recombination, primary inversion, and secondary excision . In primary event...

To gain more insight into initiation and regulation of T cell receptor (TCR) gene rearrangement during human T cell development, we analyzed TCR gene rearrangements by quantitative PCR analysis in nine consecutive T cell developmental stages, including CD34+ lin- cord blood cells as a reference. The same stages were used for gene expression profiling using DNA microarrays. We show that TCR loci...

Circular DNAs excised by immunoglobulin K chain gene rearrangements were cloned and characterized. 16 of 17 clones examined were double recombination products containing aVKJK rearrangement (coding joint) as well as the reciprocal element (signal joint) of another Vfc-JK rearrangement . These products suggested multiple recombination, primary inversion, and secondary excision . In primary event...