ABSTRACT
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One of the fascinating properties of immunoglobulin (Ig) genes is the diversity of proteins (antibodies) they encode. It has been estimated that any mammalian immune system is capable of generating more than 10
antibodies with different specificities. Understanding this unique biological phenomenon has been a challenge to many of us. For this reason, different aspects of Ig genes such as the structure, organization, regulation, rearrangement, and expression have been the focus of very intense studies for the past several decades. In this chapter, we are going to describe different contemporary PCR methods of cloning and sequencing Ig genes. We also provide the reader with an updated reference of all mouse Ig V gene families with regard to their numbers, sequence alignments, and sequence similarities.
