Antigen receptor gene assembly is regulated by transcriptional promoters and enhancers, which control the accessibility of gene segments to a lymphocyte-specific V(D)J recombinase. However, it remained unclear whether accessibility depends on the process of transcription itself or chromatin modifications that accompany transcription. By using T cell receptor  substrates that integrate stably into nuclear chromatin, we show that promoter location, rather than germ-line transcription or histone acetylation, is a primary determinant of recombination efficiency. These spatial constraints on promoter positioning may reflect an RNA polymerase-independent mechanism to target adjacent gene segments for chromatin remodeling events that facilitate rearrangement.A ntigen receptor genes are assembled in developing lymphocytes by a series of recombination events that fuse variable (V), diversity (D), and joining (J) gene segments. Two lymphocyte-specific proteins, termed RAG-1 and RAG-2, are essential components of the V(D)J recombinase complex (1, 2). These proteins introduce double-strand DNA breaks at selected recombination signal sequences (RSSs), which flank all Ig and T cell receptor (TCR) gene segments. The RSSs contain conserved heptamer and nonamer sequences separated by a nonconserved spacer (12 or 23 bp). Under physiological conditions, RAGmediated cleavage requires the synapsis of a 12-bp and a 23-bp RSS (3, 4). Ubiquitous DNA repair enzymes then fuse participating gene segments and RSSs to generate a chromosomal coding join and a signal join, respectively (5). Although most RSSs are interchangeable, V(D)J recombinase is targeted to specific Ig and TCR loci during lymphocyte development. For example, assembly of TCR genes is restricted to thymocytes, initiating with rearrangement of D and J segments, followed by V to DJ and ultimately V␣ to J␣ recombination (6).Prevailing models for the developmental control of V(D)J recombination invoke changes in the accessibility of specific gene segments to the RAG-1͞2 complex (6-8). Extensive correlations exist between transcription of unrearranged gene segments and their recombination potential (9, 10), suggesting that germ-line transcription and RAG accessibility share key regulatory components. Indeed, deletion of transcriptional enhancers from most Ig and TCR loci dramatically impairs the assembly of linked gene segments (3, 6). We and others have shown that the TCR enhancer (E) mediates efficient D1J rearrangement via activation of a promoter located directly upstream of the D1 gene segment (PD; refs. 11-13). Because prior studies have shown that chromatin impairs the access of RAG proteins to RSSs (14), promoter activation likely regulates recombination by initiating a cascade of chromatin modifications that culminate in gene transcription. In this regard, the acetylation of histones H3 and H4 correlates tightly with the transcription and recombination of antigen receptor loci (7,15,16). Despite these correlations, it remains unknown whether promoter-direct...