Access
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
Article
Nature 316, 517-523 (8 August 1985) | doi:10.1038/316517a0; Accepted 13 June 1985
The murine T-cell receptor uses a limited repertoire of expressed V
gene segments
Richard K. Barth*, Byung S. Kim*, †, Nancy C. Lan*, Tim Hunkapiller*, Nancy Sobieck*, Astar Winoto*, Howard Gershenfeld‡, Craig Okada‡, Dan Hansburg§, Irving L. Weissman‡ & Leroy Hood*
- *Division of Biology, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA
- ‡Department of Pathology, Stanford Medical School, Palo Alto, California 94304, USA
- §Department of Pathology, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19111, USA
- †Permanent address: Department of Microbiology/Immunology, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois 60611, USA.
Abstract
Only 10 different V
gene segments were found when the sequences of 15 variable (V) genes of the mouse T-cell receptor were examined. From this analysis we calculate that the total number of expressed V gene segments may be 21 or fewer, which makes the expressed germline V repertoire much smaller than that of the immunoglobulin heavy-chain or light-chain genes. We suggest that 
chain somatic diversification is concentrated at the V-D-J junctions.
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
