Establishment of a novel B cell clonality analysis using single-strand conformation polymorphism of immunoglobulin light chain messenger signals.

The remarkable diversity of the complementarity determining region (CDR) 3 of the immunoglobulin (Ig) heavy (H) chain gene rearrangements has been exploited to identify the clonal populations of B cells in B cell malignancies. However, when B cell malignancies of different categories were examined, the overall detection rate was found to be approximately 70%. The development of a simple clonality analysis using Ig light (L) chain CDR3 diversity has been hampered due to the sparseness of knowledge regarding the sequence of Vkappa and Vlambda gene segments and the restriction of L chain CDR3 length. Based on the recently reported Vkappa and Vlambda gene sequences, we designed Vkappa and Vlambda framework 3 consensus primers. We combined the reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) of IgL chain transcripts with a single-strand conformation polymorphism (SSCP) analysis and then analyzed samples from patients with B cell malignancies. Clonal B cell populations were detected as discrete bands, and identical clones showed a similar mobility in a RT-PCR SSCP analysis. This method was thus found to be a useful supplement to the previously described approach of VH gene amplification for detecting clonal B cell populations. By using SSCP, we were able to determine the clonal identities of B cell expansion in different samples.