Scid mouse Pre-B cells with intracellular mu chains: analysis of recombinase activity and IgH gene rearrangements.

Four Pre-B cell clones with intracellular mu chains were recovered from individual leaky scid mice by transformation of bone marrow or peritoneal cells with Abelson murine leukemia virus. Three clones were derived from independent bone marrow cell cultures. These express the defective scid recombinase activity and contain truncated mu chains resulting from abnormal and/or incomplete (D to J only) gene rearrangements. A fourth clone was obtained from a peritoneal cell culture and may represent a revertant. It expresses a recombinase activity indistinguishable from that of wild-type cells; one of its rearranged IgH alleles (VDJ+) encodes a normal size mu chain, the other is non-productively rearranged (VDJ-).