Highlights from other journals

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 100 KB
• Volume: 33
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0265-9247
• DOI: 10.1002/bies.201190007

✦ Synopsis

Activation-induced deaminase (AID) deaminates cytosines within the immunoglobulin loci, providing the trigger for both class-switching and IgV somatic hypermutation. Intriguingly, hyper-IgM patients carrying mutations in the C-terminal region of AID retain the ability to hypermutate their IgV genes, although they are deficient in Ig class-switching. Since the AID C-terminus contains a nuclear-export sequence (NES), it has been suggested that interaction of AID with the nuclear export machinery might be essential for Ig class-switching, but not for IgV hypermutation. In a recent article in European Journal of Immunology, Ellyard et al. study the interaction of various AID C-terminal mutants with the export machinery and report that, although the interaction between AID NES and the export machinery is essential for Ig class-switching, the affinity of this interaction does not correlate with the efficacy of Ig class-switching. These results suggest that some -as yet unidentified -interaction involving the AID C-terminus, in addition to the interaction with the export machinery, is also essential for Ig classswitching, but not for IgV hypermutation.