Cloning of human immunoglobulin mu gene and comparison with mouse mu gene.

We have cloned a 12 kb DNA segment containing human mu gene and its flanking sequence from human fetal liver DNA library using mouse mu gene as a probe. Partial nucleotide sequence determination shows that the cloned DNA contains the sequence encoding human mu chain. This is the first constant region gene of the human heavy chain that is cloned. We have compared human and mouse mu genes by heteroduplex analysis and Southern blot hybridization. The results clearly show that not only the sequence encoding the CH4 domain but also the 5'-flanking (S mu) sequence is conserved between human and mouse mu genes, suggesting that the nucleotide sequence in the S mu region has an important biological function, presumably a recognition signal for the class switch recombinant as proposed previously.