Nomenclature of the human immunoglobulin heavy (IGH) genes

'Nomenclature of the Human Immunoglobulin Heavy (IGH) Genes', the 16th report of the 'IMGT Locus in Focus' section, provides the first complete list of all the human IGH genes. The total number of human IGH genes per haploid genome is 170-176 (206-212 genes, if the orphons and the processed gene are included), of which 77-84 genes are functional. IMGT/Human Genome Organization (HUGO) gene names and definitions of the human IGH genes on chromosome 14q32.33, processed gene on chromosome 9 and IGH orphons on chromosomes 15 and 16 are provided with the gene functionality and the number of alleles, according to the rules of the IMGT Scientific chart, with the accession numbers of the IMGT reference sequences and with the accession ID of the Genome Database GDB and NCBI LocusLink databases, in which all the IMGT human IGH genes have been entered. The tables are available at the IMGT Marie-Paule page of IMGT, the international ImMunoGeneTics database (http://imgt.cines.fr:8104) created by Marie-Paule Lefranc, Universite Montpellier II, CNRS, France. Copyright (C) 2001 S. Karger AG, Basel.