Activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID) is required for both CSR and SHM because AID deficiency in mouse and human completely abolishes these two genetic alterations (2, 3). In addition to AID, CSR and SHM require transcription of target DNAs, S regions, and V regions, respectively (4-10). AID expression in non-B cells such as fibroblasts and T cells can induce CSR and SHM on transfected artificial constructs if the target DNA is actively transcribed (11-13). Therefore, AID and target transcription appear to be essential and sufficient for CSR and SHM in non-B as well as B cells. However, studies on transgenic (Tg) mouse lines ubiquitously expressing AID showed neither distortion of the B220 ϩ B cell population nor increase in serum IgG levels (14). Although all mice died by 80 weeks because of T cell lymphomas, no B cell lymphomas were observed in the Tg mice (14). These observations have raised a possibility that Tg AID is negatively regulated in B cells. However, we could not exclude the possibility that dysregulation of T cells by a very early onset of T lymphomas may perturb B cell responses in AID-Tg mice.It is therefore important to test the effects of constitutive AID expression in B cells using a more defined system. We thus generated Tg mice, which express AID constitutively only in B cells, and crossed them with AID-deficient mice. Using this system, we found that the Tg AID, despite its abundance, is much less efficient for CSR and SHM than the endogenous AID, suggesting that AID is negatively regulated in B cells.