Orientation-Specific Joining of AID-initiated DNA Breaks Promotes Antibody Class Switching
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ABSTRACT: During B cell development, RAG endonuclease cleaves immunoglobulin heavy chain (IgH) V, D, and J gene segments and orchestrates their fusion as deletional events that assemble a V(D)J exon in the same transcriptional orientation as adjacent Cμ constant region exons. In mice, six additional sets of constant region exons (CHs) lie 100-200kb downstream in the same transcriptional orientation as V(D)J and Cμ exons. Long repetitive switch (S) regions precede Cμ and downstream CHs. In mature B cells, class switch recombination (CSR) generates different antibody classes by replacing Cμ with a downstream CH. Activation Induced Cytidine Deaminase (AID) initiates CSR by promoting deamination lesions within Sμ and a downstream acceptor S region; these lesions are converted into DNA double strand breaks (DSBs) by general DNA repair factors. Productive CSR must occur in a deletional orientation by joining the upstream end of an Sμ DSB to the downstream end of an acceptor S region DSB. However, the relative frequency of deletional to inversional CSR junctions had not been measured. Thus, whether orientation-specific joining is a programmed mechanistic feature of CSR as it is for V(D)J recombination and, if so, how this is achieved was unknown. To address this question, we adapted high throughput genome wide translocation sequencing (HTGTS) into a highly sensitive DSB end-joining assay and applied it to endogenous AID-initiated S region DSBs. We find that CSR indeed is programmed to occur in a productive deletional orientation and does so via an unprecedented mechanism that involves in cis IgH organizational features in combination with frequent S region DSBs initiated by AID. We further implicate ATM-dependent DSB response (DSBR) factors in enforcing this mechanism and provide a solution to the enigma of why CSR is so reliant on the 53BP1 DSBR factor.
ORGANISM(S): Mus musculus
PROVIDER: GSE71005 | GEO | 2015/08/26
SECONDARY ACCESSION(S): PRJNA290091
REPOSITORIES: GEO
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