Access

News and Views

Nature Immunology 9, 718–720 (1 July 2008) | doi:10.1038/ni0708-718

Nuclear geography and allelic exclusion

Cornelis Murre

During lymphoid development, variable (V), diversity (D), and joining (J) gene elements are assembled by somatic DNA recombination to generate antigen receptors. V(D)J gene rearrangement is initiated by binding of the recombination-activating gene products RAG-1 and RAG-2 to the recombination signal sequences that flank the V, D and J elements.