Abstract
Mature T cell receptor (TCR) and immunoglobulin (Ig) genes are assembled from separate gene segments, which are flanked by recombination signal sequences (RSS), consisting of conserved heptamer and nonamer motifs separated by a spacer region of 12 or 23 base pairs (bp). V(D)J recombination results in a precise head-to-head ligation of two signal sequences in a signal joint, and the imprecise joining of two coding segments in a coding joint, which may contain additions or deletions of a few bp. The imprecise nature of coding joints led to the hypothesis that double strand breaks (DSB) might be intermediates in the recombination pathway These DSB can then be processed by an exonuclease and/or by terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase (TdT) before formation of a coding joint.
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van Gent, D.C., McBlane, J.F., Ramsden, D.A., Sadofsky, M.J., Hesse, J.E., Gellert, M. (1996). Initiation of V(D)J Recombination in a Cell-Free System by RAG1 and RAG2 Proteins. In: Jessberger, R., Lieber, M.R. (eds) Molecular Analysis of DNA Rearrangements in the Immune System. Current Topics in Microbiology and Immunology, vol 217. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-50140-1_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-50140-1_1
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