[2] Immunoglobulins recognize foreign antigens and initiate immune responses such as phagocytosis and the complement system.
This region represents the germline organization of the lambda light chain locus.
The locus includes V (variable), J (joining), and C (constant) segments.
Additional diversity is attained by junctional diversity, resulting from the random additional of nucleotides by terminal deoxynucleotidyltransferase, and by somatic hypermutation, which occurs during B cell maturation in the spleen and lymph nodes.
The locus also includes several non-immunoglobulin genes, many of which are pseudogenes or are predicted by automated computational analysis or homology to other species.