The gene segments encoding the constant and variable regions of human immunoglobulin light chains of the kappa type (C kappa, V kappa) have been localized to chromosome 2. The distance between the C kappa and V kappa genes and the number of germline V kappa genes are unknown. As part of our work on the human V kappa locus, we have now mapped two solitary V kappa gene and a cluster of three V kappa genes to chromosomes 1, 15 and 22, respectively. The three genes that have been sequenced are nonprocessed pseudogenes, and the same may be true for the other two genes. This is the first time that V-gene segments have been found outside the C-gene-containing chromosomes. Our finding is relevant to current estimates of the size of the V kappa-gene repertoire. Furthermore, the dispersed gene regions have some unusual characteristics which may help to clarify the mechanism of dispersion.
Several selectable genes have been reported for construction of filamentous fungal transformation vectors. Among the most widely used is the hygB (also known as hph) gene of E. coli, which is generally useful because the corresponding selective agent (hygromycin B) is toxic to wild type strains of many fungi and because scoring of transformants is usually unambiguous. We, and others (Avalos et al. 1989 Curr. Genet. 16:369-372), have found that the same merits are evident using bialaphos (or phosphinothricin) as a selective agent and the bar gene (DeBlock et al. 1987 EMBO J. 6:2513-2518), which encodes phosphinothricin acetyltransferase, as a selectable marker. We report here the construction of three vectors which carry bar as the selectable gene and have easily exchangeable parts as well as convenient cloning sites.
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