Evolutionary relationship between human and mouse immunoglobulin kappa light chain variable region genes

✍ Scribed by Guido Kroemer; Arno Helmberg; Alain Bernot; Charles Auffray; Reinhard Kofler

• Book ID: 104666785
• Publisher: Springer-Verlag
• Year: 1991
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 723 KB
• Volume: 33
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0093-7711
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00211694

✦ Synopsis

Similar to the Igh-V multigene family, the human or mouse Igk-V repertoire is a distorted continuum of homologous genes that may be grouped into families displaying greater than 80% nucleic acid sequence similarity among their members. Systematic interspecies sequence comparisons reveal that most human Igk-V gene families exhibit clear homology to mouse Igk-V families (sequence similarity generally greater than 74%). A hypothetical phylogenetic tree of Igk-V genes predicts that a minimum of seven Igk-V genes/families predate mammalian radiation. In two cases, several interrelated mouse Igk-V families exhibit phylogenetic equidistance with just one human Igk-V family, implying a more pronounced divergence for the elevated number of Igk-V gene families in the mouse. Mouse-human Igk-V comparisons, moreover, illustrate how expansion, contraction, and perhaps deletion of Igk-V gene families shape the Igk-V repertoire during mammalian evolution.