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Science 15 February 2002:
Vol. 295. no. 5558, pp. 1244 - 1245
DOI: 10.1126/science.1070023
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Perspectives

IMMUNOLOGY:
One AID to Unite Them All

Sebastian D. Fugmann and David G. Schatz

By creating an extremely diverse antibody repertoire, B cells protect the body against numerous infectious pathogens. Generation of this antibody repertoire depends on immunoglobulin gene modification events driven by four different molecular processes: V(D)J recombination, somatic hypermutation, class switch recombination, and gene conversion. The enzyme AID (activation-induced cytidine deaminase) is known to be involved in somatic hypermutation and class switch recombination. In their Perspective, Fugmann and Schatz explain that AID is also essential for gene conversion (Arakawa et al.) and discuss how AID could operate in these three quite different processes.

The authors are at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Section of Immunobiology, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06510, USA. E-mail: david.schatz{at}yale.edu

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