Bertrand F E, Olson S L, Martin D A, Wu G E
Wellesley Hospital Research Institute and the Department of Immunology, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Dev Immunol. 1998;5(3):215-22. doi: 10.1155/1998/54045.
The recombination activating genes RAG-1 and RAG-2 are highly conserved throughout evolution and are necessary and essential for the DNA rearrangement of antigen-receptor gene segments. These convergently transcribed genes are expressed primarily by developing B and T lineage cells. In addition, recent data suggest that the RAG locus can be reactivated in mouse germinal center B cells. Despite these well-defined patterns of expression, little is known about mechanism(s) regulating transcription of the RAG locus. Experiments with a mouse fibroblast line stably transfected with a genomic fragment of the RAG locus suggest that the intergenic region between RAG-1 and RAG-2 may contain information modulating RAG transcription. In order to begin testing this hypothesis, we have sequenced the 7.0-kb RAG intergenic region of the mouse. The sequence did not contain open reading frames larger than 60 amino acids. Analysis with GCG software identified several potential transcription-factor binding sequences within this region. Many of these are associated with transcriptional regulation of the Ig locus.
重组激活基因RAG-1和RAG-2在整个进化过程中高度保守，对抗原受体基因片段的DNA重排是必需且至关重要的。这些反向转录的基因主要由发育中的B细胞和T细胞系表达。此外，最近的数据表明，RAG基因座可在小鼠生发中心B细胞中重新激活。尽管有这些明确的表达模式，但对于调节RAG基因座转录的机制知之甚少。用稳定转染了RAG基因座基因组片段的小鼠成纤维细胞系进行的实验表明，RAG-1和RAG-2之间的基因间区域可能包含调节RAG转录的信息。为了开始验证这一假设，我们对小鼠7.0 kb的RAG基因间区域进行了测序。该序列不包含大于60个氨基酸的开放阅读框。用GCG软件分析在该区域内鉴定出几个潜在的转录因子结合序列。其中许多与Ig基因座的转录调控有关。
