The immunoglobulin gene system is unique in the sense that thousands of different antibodies are synthesized in different cells, which are supposed to have the same DNA content.
Surprisingly, we do not have as many genes as the variants of antibodies in an organism, but instead sequences coding for different types of antibodies are actually derived in different cells through rearrangement of the master DNA sequence available in the germline. This has been achieved by a remarkable mechanism which has been discovered only recently.
In view of the significance of this discovery, the 1987 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine was awarded to S. Tonegawa of MIT (USA) for his valuable work on this subject. This work will be briefly discussed in this section.
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