Regulation of Immunoglobulin Light-Chain Recombination by the Transcription Factor IRF-4 and the Attenuation of Interleukin-7 Signaling

Productive rearrangement of the immunoglobulin heavy-chain locus triggers a major developmental checkpoint that promotes limited clonal expansion of pre-B cells, thereby culminating in cell-cycle arrest and rearrangement of light-chain loci. By using Irf4−/−Irf8−/− pre-B cells, we demonstrated that two pathways converge to synergistically drive light-chain rearrangement, but not simply as a consequence of cell-cycle exit. One pathway was...