Immunoglobulin light chain (IGL) genes in torafugu: Genomic organization and identification of a third teleost IGL isotype

Abstract

Here, we report a genome-wide survey of immunoglobulin light chain (IGL) genes of torafugu (Takifugu rubripes) revealing multi-clusters spanning three separate chromosomes (v5 assembly) and 45 scaffolds (v4 assembly). Conventional sequence similarity searches and motif scanning approaches based on recombination signal sequence (RSS) motifs were used. We found that three IGL isotypes (L1, L2, and L3) exist in torafugu and that several loci for each isotype are present. The transcriptional orientations of the variable IGL (VL) segments were found to be either the same (in the L2 isotype) or opposite (in the L1 and L3 isotypes) to the IGL joining (JL) and constant (CL) segments, suggesting they can undergo rearrangement by deletion or inversion when expressed. Alignments of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) to corresponding germline gene segments revealed expression of the three IGL isotypes in torafugu. Taken together, our findings provide a genomic framework for torafugu IGL genes and show that the IG diversity of this species could be attributed to at least three distinct chromosomal regions.