Diversity of murine gamma genes and expression in fetal and adult T lymphocytes.
The search for the genes encoding the T-cell receptor alpha and chains revealed a third gene, T gamma (ref. 1), which shares with t T alpha (refs 2-7) and T beta (refs 8-15) genes a number of structure features, including somatic rearrangement during T-cell development. T gamma gene expression appears to be unnecessary in son mature T cells and is at its greatest in fetal thymocytes encouraging speculation that T gamma has a role in T-cell development and may be involved in the recognition of polymorphic major histocompatibility complex (MHC) products during thymic education. One argument against the participation of T gamma in such a process has been its apparently limited diversity, due to the small number of gene segments available for rearrangement. We here describe the identification of additional T gamma V-gene segments and demonstrate that they can be rearranged to previously identified J- and C-gene segments and are expressed in fetal thymocytes. In addition we describe a variety of patterns of T gamma mRNA processing which may be significant for T gamma gene regulation.
D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D004247:DNA / Q000032:analysis; D005796:Genes; D051379:Mice; D010446:Peptide Fragments / Q000235:genetics*; D012326:RNA Splicing; D011948:Receptors, Antigen, T-Cell / Q000235:genetics*; D016693:Receptors, Antigen, T-Cell, alpha-beta; D016692:Receptors, Antigen, T-Cell, gamma-delta; D013601:T-Lymphocytes / Q000032:analysis*; D013950:Thymus Gland / Q000196:embryology
D010446:Peptide Fragments; D011948:Receptors, Antigen, T-Cell; D016693:Receptors, Antigen, T-Cell, alpha-beta; D016692:Receptors, Antigen, T-Cell, gamma-delta; D004247:DNA