Three reactions diversify antibody genes in human somatic cells of the B lineage: VDJ recombination, somatic hypermutation and class-switch recombination. The discovery of activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID) has led to the elucidation of a unified molecular mechanism for initiation of the last two reactions and suggests why B cells undergoing these reactions are prone to cancer-associated DNA damage.
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Nussenzweig, M., Alt, F. Antibody diversity: one enzyme to rule them all. Nat Med 10, 1304–1305 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm1204-1304
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nm1204-1304
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