Abstract
THE origin of immunoglobulin diversity and species specificity continues to be a controversial topic. Proponents of the germ line theory have presented a limited gene expansion-contraction model in general terms1–3; the mechanism has not yet been demonstrated to produce sufficiently rapid changes in a multigene system to account for the observed phenomena. Species divergence of immunoglobulin V regions continues to be cited as strong evidence against multiple germ line V genes4,5. We report here computer simulation of random unequal crossing over within a system of multiple related genes and compare the results with the relationships observed between immunoglobulin V region sequences from different species. We conclude that the species-specific features of immunoglobulin V regions can arise as a result of such random processes operating in the multigene set.
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BLACK, J., GIBSON, D. Neutral evolution and immunoglobulin diversity. Nature 250, 327–328 (1974). https://doi.org/10.1038/250327a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/250327a0
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