IMGT®, the international ImMunoGeneTics information system®

logo IMGT

Configuration

The 'configuration' concept defines the status of the V, D and J genes before or after DNA rearrangements, respectively. The two main instances of that concept are:

The 'configuration' concept is particularly important because it is unique, in the animal and plant genomes, to the vertebrate IG and TR genes.

The 'configuration' concept is part of the 'IDENTIFICATION' concept of the IMGT-ONTOLOGY [1].

Note that the C-GENEs do not rearrange directly and therefore their configuration is undefined.

IMGT note:
  • 1. In the absence of a germline sequence, a "consensus sequence" may be used sometimes in the literature. In IMGT/LIGM-DB, such a consensus sequence is assigned with the "unknown configuration" in the keywords and with a "consensus sequence" note in the qualifiers.

Reference:
[1] Giudicelli, V. and Lefranc, M.-P., Bioinformatics, 15, 1047-1054 (1999) PMID: 10745995, LIGM:221 pdf