The central part of the mouse immunoglobulin κ locus

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Abstract
At the present state of analysis the central part of the κ locus comprises four contigs of together 1.2 Mb and contains 55 Vκ genes. It is flanked by the 3′ part of the locus with 22 Vκ genes in 0.4 Mb (T. Kirschbaum et al., Eur. J. Immunol. 1998. 28: 1458 – 1466) and the 5′ part with 63 Vκ genes in six contigs of together 1.5 Mb (F. Röschenthaler et al., accompanying report). The 5′ and the central regions have one large contig in common. A part of the central region is linked to the 3′ region resulting in a 1.1‐Mb contig. The structure of the contigs was established mainly by the analysis of overlapping cosmid clones derived from genomic DNA and yeast and bacterial artificial chromosomes (YACs and BACs) and by PCR techniques. Pulsed‐field gel electrophoresis of YAC digests indicated that three gaps between the contigs of the central region are 10 – 40 kb in size, comprising together about 90 kb. Internal duplications in this part of the locus and rearranged YACs were the major problems of the structural work. Structural details are to be found on the Internet at http://www.med.uni‐muenchen.de/biochemie/zachau/kappa.htm. In a concluding section of the report the mouse κ locus is compared to the human one and some aspects of the evolution of the κ locus are discussed.