Nucleotide Composition of Human Ig Nontemplated Regions Depends on Trimming of the Flanking Gene Segments, and Terminal Deoxynucleotidyl Transferase Favors Adding Cytosine, Not Guanosine, in Most VDJ Rearrangements.

ABSTRACT: The formation of nontemplated (N) regions during Ig gene rearrangement is a major contributor to Ab diversity. To gain insights into the mechanisms behind this, we studied the nucleotide composition of N regions within 29,962 unique human V_HDJ_H rearrangements and 8728 unique human DJ_H rearrangements containing exactly one identifiable D gene segment and thus two N regions, N1 and N2. We found a distinct decreasing content of cytosine (C) and increasing content of guanine (G) across each N region, suggesting that N regions are typically generated by concatenation of two 3' overhangs synthesized by addition of nucleoside triphosphates with a preference for dCTP. This challenges the general assumption that the terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase favors dGTP

SUBMITTER: Funck T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6121214 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature