Failure of immunoglobulin heavy and light chain pairing and consequences for cell death in the bursa of Fabricius.
Published: 2005
Language: eng
Number of pages: 116
Description: The majority of lymphocytes generated post-hatch in the bursa of Fabricius do not emigrate to the periphery, but die by apoptosis in situ. Lymphocytes that are subsequently induced to undergo apoptosis lose their surface immunoglobulin expression. Furthermore, it has been shown that loss of surface immunoglobulin expression precedes bursal cell death in vivo. We have uncovered a novel mechanism operating in the bursa of Fabricius that offers an explanation for the loss of surface immunoglobulin expression by developing bursal cells. The pre-immune repertoire in the bursa is generated by the process of somatic gene conversion. The efficiency with which this process maintains the reading frame of newly generated immunoglobulin variable-region sequences exceeds 97%. However, we demonstrated that one third of immunoglobulin variable-region sequences introduced by the ongoing gene conversion in the bursa encode heavy and light chain variable domains that preclude their association on the protein level and result in lack of surface immunoglobulin expression.
Notes: Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 44-02, page: 0813.

Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Toronto, 2005.

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