Article Abstract:
Notch functions in the Drosophila embryo have been extensively characterized but its role in vertebrates remains poorly understood. In a study of notch expression in developing T cells of the mouse, it was shown that notch leads to increased expression of CD8 lineage T cells but not CD4 cell lineages. CD8 gene expression was observed even in the absence of class I major histocompatibility complex (MHC) but not when both class I and class II MHC were absent. These results indicate that Notch is involved in cell fate decisions between CD4 and CD8 cell lineages.
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Article Abstract:
The V(D)J recombination process is characterized as having the recombinase respond to the conserved recombinational signal sequence in the assembly of immunoglobin (Ig) and T cell receptor (TCR) genes in B and T cell precursors. Experiments have validated that recombinase response is tightly tied to the cell lineage and the developmental stage, with the chromatin acting as an exchange access, RSS as the access authorization and recombinase as the mediator.
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Article Abstract:
Homologous recombination in embryonic stem (ES) cells is used for developing mice, which expresses a GFP cDNA from an unrearranged immunoglobulin kappa light-chain allele. The mechanism of kappa locus allelic exclusion possibly consists of enhancer activation and allelic competition and may contribute towards cellular differentiation during development.
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