Transcripts from an aberrantly re-arranged human T-cell receptor beta-chain gene.

A number of cDNA clones homologous to the human T-cell receptor beta-chain gene have been isolated from a library constructed from the human leukaemic cell line Jurkat. The nucleotide sequences of two of these clones demonstrate that Jurkat synthesizes an RNA, probably derived from an aberrantly rearranged C beta 1 gene, which cannot encode a functional beta-chain. This transcript contains a novel joining region and similar transcripts appear to be relatively abundant in several T-cell lines.