Involvement of Illegitimate V(D)J Recombination or Microhomology-mediated Nonhomologous End-joining in the Formation of Intragenic Deletions of the Notch1 Gene in Mouse Thymic Lymphomas

Deregulated V(D)J recombination-mediated chromosomal rearrangements are implicated in the etiology of B- and T-cell lymphomagenesis. We describe three pathways for the formation of 5'-deletions of the Notch1 gene in thymic lymphomas of wild-type or V(D)J recombination-defective severe combined immune deficiency (scid) mice. A pair of recombination signal sequence-like sequences composed of heptamer- and nonamer-like motifs separated by 12- or 23-bp spacers (12- and 23-recombination signal sequence) were present in the vicinity of the deletion breakpoints in wild-type thymic lymphomas, accompanied by palindromic or nontemplated nucleotides at the junctions. In scid thymic lymphomas, the deletions at the recombination signal sequence-like sequences occurred at a significantly lower frequency than in wild-type mice, whereas the deletions did not occur in Rag2(-/-) thymocytes. These results show that the 5'-deletions are formed by Rag-mediated V(D)J recombination machinery at cryptic recombination signal sequences in the Notch1 locus. In contrast, one third of the deletions in radiation-induced scid thymic lymphomas had microhomology at both ends, indicating that in the absence of DNA-dependent protein kinase-dependent nonhomologous end-joining, the microhomology-mediated nonhomologous end-joining pathway functions as the main mechanism to produce deletions. Furthermore, the deletions were induced via a coupled pathway between Rag-mediated cleavage at a cryptic recombination signal sequence and microhomology-mediated end-joining in radiation-induced scid thymic lymphomas. As the deletions at cryptic recombination signal sequences occur spontaneously, microhomology-mediated pathways might participate mainly in radiation-induced lymphomagenesis. Recombination signal sequence-mediated deletions were present clonally in the thymocyte population, suggesting that thymocytes with a 5'-deletion of the Notch1 gene have a growth advantage and are involved in lymphomagenesis.