Genomic organization of the T-cell receptor gamma gene and PCR detection of its clonal rearrangement in canine T-cell lymphoma/leukemia

Because the T-cell receptor gamma (TCRgamma) gene is rearranged at an early stage of T-cell development in both TCRalphabeta and TCRgammadelta lineages, it has been preferentially targeted to detect T-cell clonality in human lymphoma/leukemia. We isolated 22 independent cDNA clones encoding canine TCRgamma and the following analysis of nucleotide sequences using the dog genome database revealed that the canine TCRgamma locus contains at least four repertories of variable genes that can be organized into two distinct subgroups and six repertories of joining genes belonging to two distinct subgroups according to the nucleotide sequence similarity. The findings allowed us to design PCR primers that were directed to the conserved or specific nucleotide sequences for each subgroup of variable and joining genes. By using four different combinations of primers, a PCR-based analysis was performed on cell samples collected from T-cell lymphoma/leukemia and B-cell lymphoma cases and hyperplastic and normal lymph nodes. All cell samples from 11 T-cell malignancy cases exhibited clonal amplification by two out of four primer combinations. This finding was considered to be valuable in PCR-based analysis for detecting T-cell clonality in canine lymphoma/leukemia.