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Molecular biology

Hairpins at split ends in DNA

Nature volume 432, pages 960–961 (2004)Cite this article

What do changing colours in corn kernels, mutations in houseflies and the variability of antibodies and of a T cell's antigen receptors in the vertebrate immune system have in common? A great deal, it turns out.

There once would have seemed to be little similarity between the random movement of transposable genetic elements within a fly, or a corn plant, or a flower petal, and the carefully orchestrated events by which antigen-receptor genes are assembled. The jumping of ‘transposons’ from one site to another in a genome can alter gene expression, giving rise to mutations that are seen as, for example, a colour change. By contrast, in the second reaction, a defined series of breakage and rejoining events within a chromosome brings together sequence elements in new combinations, for the express purpose of generating diversity in the receptors (antibodies and T-cell receptors) that detect foreign antigens. Nonetheless, a case for a mechanistic connection has been building for some time, and on page 995 of this issue, Zhou and colleagues1 reveal a remarkable similarity in the steps by which the DNA is broken — a similarity that may extend to the structures of the enzymes responsible for this cleavage.

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Figure 1: Hairpin formation in transposition and V(D)J recombination.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School,

    Marjorie A. Oettinger

  2. Department of Molecular Biology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, 02114, Massachusetts, USA

    Marjorie A. Oettinger

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  1. Marjorie A. Oettinger
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Oettinger, M. Hairpins at split ends in DNA. Nature 432, 960–961 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/432960b

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