Cell
Volume 118, Issue 5, 3 September 2004, Pages 539-544
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Review
The Lingering Enigma of the Allelic Exclusion Mechanism

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Abstract

B lymphocytes produce diverse antibody specificities by “randomly” assembling antibody genes from germline segments. Yet, though each B lymphocyte has multiple allelic loci for the different antibody chains, each clonally derived mature B lymphocyte expresses a single species of antibody with a unique specificity via a process termed allelic exclusion. Despite some progress, the precise mechanism of allelic exclusion remains an enigma.

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