Antibody genes Qs 1-8

Question 1

Genes for immunoglobulins are unlike other human genes in that:

Answer 1

somatic recombination occurs before mRNA is transcribed, there is less Ig genetic material in mature B cells than in other somatic cells.

Question 2

The gene segments needed to encode the variable region of a k chain are:

Answer 2

one Vk plus one Jk.

Question 3

Pseudogenes are DNA sequences which look very similar to functional genes except for the presence of a:

Answer 3

Stop codon.

Question 4

Combinatorial diversity says that by random combination of 40 functional Vk segments with five Jk segments, the number of possible different k chains that could be made are:

Answer 4

200