Friday, October 28, 2011
Hall 1-2 (San Jose Convention Center)
Activation Induced Cytosine Deaminase (AID) is a key enzyme in our adaptive immune system that causes mutations in immunoglobulin (Ig) genes of activated B cells, and is critical for efficient antibody-mediated immune responses. AID mutates selectively Ig loci, but on rare occasions also induces somatic hypermutation of non-Ig genes, and if it hits oncogenes it can lead to B-cell tumorigenesis. Here we set out to determine the mutation frequency of the C-MYC gene in chicken DT40 cells as this gene is a non-Ig target of AID in murine B cells and human B cell lymphomas. We established a mutation analysis approach and are in the process of completing the first round of experiments looking at C-MYC mutation frequencies.