Molecular characterization of germ-line immunoglobulin A transcripts produced during transforming growth factor type beta-induced isotype switching.

The addition of transforming growth factor type beta to lipopolysaccharide-stimulated murine B-cell cultures enhances isotype switching to IgA and induces the appearance of two sizes of alpha mRNA transcripts. One of these is the same size as mRNA for secreted IgA but the other, which is 300-400 base pairs (bp) shorter, does not correlate in size with any form of productive alpha mRNA. Both sizes of transcript were shown to contain germ-line sequences 5' to the alpha switch region, suggesting that the longer transcripts included both germ-line and productive forms of alpha mRNA, whereas the shorter transcripts were only germ-line alpha mRNA. We isolated cDNA clones corresponding to the shorter, 1.3-kilobase (kb), transcript by using an anchored polymerase chain reaction and a specific primer for the constant region. Analyses of these cDNA clones show that the short transcript consists of a 126-bp exon located approximately 1.5 kb 5' to the alpha switch region spliced to the first exon of the alpha constant region locus. Furthermore, a minor fraction of the longer, approximately 1.7 kb, transcripts also contains this exon. These results demonstrate that transforming growth factor type beta-mediated isotype switching to IgA is preceded by transcriptional activation of the heavy-chain locus.