Activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID) has been shown to trigger three mechanisms for diversifying immunoglobulin genes—somatic hypermutation, isotype switch recombination and gene conversion—most probably by initiating cytidine deamination at the immunoglobulin locus. Although this deamination process has been shown to be potentially mutagenic by itself, most of the mutations generated in the physiological hypermutation process seem to be created through the AID-mediated assembly of a mutasome complex involving specific repair activities and error-prone DNA polymerases.
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