Rearranged antibody genes in B lymphocytes are subjected to somatic hypermutation mediated by activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID) in order to increase antibody diversity. Buerstedde et al. used a fluorescent reporter system for somatic hypermutation in a B cell line to test the ability of mouse and human regulatory elements to enhance somatic hypermutation. They found that different immunoglobulin enhancer and enhancer-like elements cooperated to promote somatic hypermutation, which may be important for restricting AID-mediated mutagenesis to appropriate loci.
References
Buerstedde, J. M. et al. Targeting of somatic hypermutation by immunoglobulin enhancer and enhancer-like sequences. PLoS Biol. 12, e1001831 (2014)
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Burgess, D. Determinants of site-specific hypermutation. Nat Rev Genet 15, 291 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg3730
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg3730