Abstract
The immunoglobulin heavy chain loci of the mouse contain eight tightly linked genes that encode the constant region (C) of the immunoglobulin heavy chains (H). As no recombination occurred within the immunoglobulin CH gene loci among more than 3,000 crosses of mice1–3, the mouse CH genes were believed to be inherited as a set, designated the Igh haplotype. Recent molecular cloning experiments4–9 have demonstrated that the organization of the mouse Igh loci of BALB/c (Igha haplotype) is 5′-Cμ-(4.5 kilobases [kb])-Cδ-(55kb)-Cγ3-(34kb)-Cγ1-(21 kb)-Cγ2b-(15 kb)-Cγ2a-(14 kb)-Cɛ-(12 kb)-Cα-3′. The structural analyses of four Cγ subclass genes have shown that they are essentially identical in terms of lengths and locations of each of the structural and intervening sequences6,10–12. Comparison of the nucleotide sequences of the Cγ1, Cγ2b and Cγ2a genes has shown that limited portions of the Cγ gene are conserved between compared pairs of the Cγ genes12. The results imply that the nucleotide sequences of the Cγ gene segments have been exchanged by recombination among related clustered genes. Similar studies on the Cγ2a genes of different haplotypes, Igha and Ighb, have also suggested that these two types of Cγ2a gene have undergone recombinational exchange of a part of the gene sequence13. These results imply, in contrast to the previous belief, that frequent recombinational events have taken place within the Igh loci and that their nucleotide sequences have been rearranged during evolution. Here we present direct evidence that a Japanese wild mouse, Mus musculus molossinus, contains duplicated Cγ2a genes while the copy numbers of the neighbouring CH genes, that is, the Cγ1, Cγ2b and Cɛ genes, remain constant. The results indicate that the duplicated Cγ2a genes of M. m. molossinus arose from unequal crossing-over between homologous chromosomes.
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Shimizu, A., Hamaguchi, Y., Yaoita, Y. et al. Japanese wild mouse, Mus musculus molossinus, has duplicated immunoglobulin γ2a genes. Nature 298, 82–84 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1038/298082a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/298082a0
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