▪ Abstract DNA repair is crucial to the well-being of all organisms from unicellular life forms to
humans. A rich tapestry of mechanistic studies on DNA repair has emerged thanks to the …

The halltnark of the immune response is its specificity and the specificity is directly correlated
with the affinity of the antigen-antibody interaction. The requirement for high affinity …

Germinal centers develop in peripheral lymphatic tlssue during the primary immune
response and may play a crucial role in affinity maturation. We have compared the …

Activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID) is a protein required for B cells to undergo
class switch recombination and somatic hypermutation (SHM)—two processes essential for …

A new approach for the analysis of hotspots of mutations is described. It is based on the
classification of hotspot site sequences. Using this approach, the consensuses RGYW and …

The chicken immunoglobulin light chain repertoire has been shown to be entirely derived
from a single VhlJ rearranged combination. The complete coding information of the li locus …

To determine whether DNA polymerase η plays a role in the hypermutation of
immunoglobulin variable genes, we examined the frequency and pattern of substitutions in …

To identify DNA sequences that target the somatic hypermutation process, the
immunoglobulin gene promoter located upstream of the variable (V) region was duplicated …

The synthesis of secondary metabolites in response to stress conditions has been
implicated as a major defence response of higher plants1. Cell suspension cultures of …

The repertoire of antibody variable (V) regions has been subject to evolutionary selection,
affecting both the diversity of V region genes in the germline and their expression in the B …