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Science 20 February 1998:
Vol. 279. no. 5354, pp. 1159 - 1160
DOI: 10.1126/science.279.5354.1159
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Research Commentaries

IMMUNOLOGY:
Fixing Mismatches

Michele Shannon and Martin Weigert

The body develops and modifies the antibodies with which it defends against invading pathogens by mutating one of the antibody genes, the variable gene. Shannon and Weigert discuss new and surprising results about the mechanism by which this hypermutation takes place (Cascalho et al., p. 1207 of this issue) in which a protein that usually repairs defects in DNA is co-opted to actually cause mutations.

The authors are in the Department of Molecular Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA. E-mail: mshannon{at}watson.princeton.edu

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)