Immunoglobulin Genes

2nd Edition - September 27, 1995
Editors: Tasuku Honjo, Frederick W. Alt
Language: English
eBook ISBN:
9 7 8 - 0 - 0 8 - 0 5 3 4 5 1 - 0

The immunoglobulin gene complex is responsible for generating an extraordinarily wide range of antibodies, each possessing a unique antigen specificity. The Second Edition of… Read more

Purchase options

LIMITED OFFER

Save 50% on book bundles

Immediately download your ebook while waiting for your print delivery. No promo code is needed.

Institutional subscription on ScienceDirect

Request a sales quote

The immunoglobulin gene complex is responsible for generating an extraordinarily wide range of antibodies, each possessing a unique antigen specificity. The Second Edition of Immunoglobulin Genes brings the reader up to date with the rapid progress in our understanding of this system. Firmly established as the definitive book on the topic, it provides a fully comprehensive account of the organization, function, rearrangement and expression of these and related genes. Since the publication of the first edition, the work has been extensively revised and updated to cover new research data on human immunoglobulin genes as well as mammalian and lower vertebrate systems. New chapters include "Somatic mutation and B cell Maturation", "Antigen receptors" and "B lymphocyte tolerance in the mouse."For the immunologist, there are detailed descriptions of the molecular mechanisms which generate this diverse range of antibodies and the tight regulation of the genes encoding them. Molecular biologists will find discussions of important phenomena including gene rearrangement, differential splicing and deletion in the context of immunoglobulin genes.The excitement of research on immunoglobulin genes is conveyed by the range and complexity of issues discussed here; the book contains invaluable information for clinicians and research scientists with an interest in the immune response.

Tasuku Honjo

Dr. Tasuku Honjo graduated from Kyoto University Faculty of Medicine in 1966 (M.D.). After obtaining his Ph.D. in Biochimistry (Dr. O. Hayaishi), he spent 4 years in the U.S.A. as a postdoctoral fellow first in Carnegie Institution of Washington (Dr. D. Brown), and then in NIH (Dr. P. Leder) where he initiated studies on immunoglobulin genes. He returned to Tokyo University as an assistant professor in 1974, and then moved to Osaka University School of Medicine as Professor of Genetics in 1979. He succeeded to Dr. O. Hayaishi after his retirement at the Department of Medical Chemistry in Kyoto University. He also served as Dean of Medical School (1996-2000 and 2004-2005), and Executive Member of Council for Science and Technology Policy, Cabinet Office (2006-2012). Currently, he is Professor of Department of Immunology and Genomic Medicine, Kyoto University, and also Chairman of Board of Directors, Shizuoka Prefectural University Corporation.

Dr. Honjo is well known for his discovery of activation-induced cytidine deaminase that is essential for class switch recombination and somatic hypermutation. He has established the basic conceptual framework of class switch recombination starting from discovery of DNA deletion (1978) and S regions (1980), followed by elucidation of the whole mouse immunoglobulin heavy-chain locus. His contribution further extended to cDNA cloning of IL-4 and IL-5 cytokines involved in class switching and IL-2 receptor alpha chain. Aside from class switching recombination, he discovered PD-1 (program cell death 1), a negative coreceptor at the effector phase of immune response and showed that PD-1 modulation contributes to treatments of viral infection, tumor and autoimmunity. In addition, he is known to be a discoverer of RBP-J, a nuclear protein that interacts with the intracellular domain of Notch in the nucleus. Notch/RBP-J signaling has been shown to regulate a variety of cell lineage commitment including T and B cells.

For these contributions, Dr. Honjo has received many awards, including the Noguchi Hideyo Memorial Prize for Medicine (1981), Imperial Prize, Japan Academy Prize (1996), Robert Koch Prize (2012), and Order of Culture (2013). He is an honorary member of the American Association of Immunologists. He has been honored by the Japanese Government as a person of cultural merits (2000). He has also been elected as a foreign associate of National Academy of Sciences, USA in 2001, as a member of Leopoldina, the German Academy of Natural Scientists in 2003, and as a member of Japan Academy in 2005.

Affiliations and expertise

Professor of Department of Immunology and Genomic Medicine, Kyoto University, Japan; Chairman of Board of Directors, Shizuoka Prefectural University Corporation, Japan

Frederick W. Alt

Frederick W. Alt is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator and Director of the Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine (PCMM) at Boston Children's Hospital (BCH). He is the Charles A. Janeway Professor of Pediatrics and Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. He works on elucidating mechanisms that generate antigen receptor diversity and, more generally, on mechanisms that generate and suppress genomic instability in mammalian cells, with a focus on the immune and nervous systems. Recently, his group has developed senstive genome-wide approaches to identify mechanisms of DNA breaks and rearrangements in normal and cancer cells. He has been elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, and the European Molecular Biology Organization. His awards include the Albert Szent-Gyorgyi Prize for Progress in Cancer Research, the Novartis Prize for Basic Immunology, the Lewis S. Rosensteil Prize for Distinugished work in Biomedical Sciences, the Paul Berg and Arthur Kornberg Lifetime Achievement Award in Biomedical Sciences, and the William Silan Lifetime Achievement Award in Mentoring from Harvard Medical School.

Affiliations and expertise

Investigator and Director, Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Laboratories, The Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA