Molecular mechanism of RAG cell periodic regulation in Cell Reports V(D)J rearrangement

During development, vertebrate B lymphocytes and T lymphocytes generate diverse cell surface receptors through V(D)J rearrangement to recognize foreign antigens and participate in the body's adaptive immune process

On October 12, 2021, Peking University's School of Life Sciences and Peking University-Tsinghua Life Sciences Joint Center Hu Jiazhi's research group published a research paper entitled RAG2 abolishes RAG1 aggregation to facilitate V(D)J recombination in Cell Reports , systematically elaborating In the cell cycle, how RAG2 regulates the aggregation of RAG1 so as to regulate the rearrangement enzyme activity of RAG1 in the cell, and expounded the biological significance of the co-evolution of RAG1 and RAG2 in vertebrates from an evolutionary perspective .

This study first observed and proved that human RAG1 protein instead of RAG2 forms aggregates in the cell nucleus through overexpression and endogenous fluorescent labeling in a variety of cell lines (Figure 1a-b); further Studies have found that the presence of RAG2 can destroy the condensed state of RAG1 (Figure 1c)

Figure 1.

Finally, the researchers also explored the universality of different vertebrate RAG2 proteins for the regulation of human RAG1 aggregates from an evolutionary perspective

Figure 2.

In summary, the study discovered the aggregation phenomenon of RAG1 in human lymphocytes and the mechanism of RAG2 involved in the regulation of RAG complex activity.

Figure 3.

Researcher Hu Jiazhi of Peking University is the corresponding author of the paper

Article link: https://

references:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.
Lin, WC, and Desiderio, S.
(1994).
Cell cycle regulation of V(D)J recombination-activating protein RAG-2.
Proc.
Natl.
Acad.
Sci.
USA 91, 2733-2737.