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Protective immune responses to many pathogens depend on the development of high-affinity antibody-producing plasma cells (PC) in germinal centers (GCs). Transgenic models suggest that there is a stringent affinity-based barrier to PC development. Whether a similar high-affinity barrier regulates PC development under physiologic circumstances and the nature of the PC fate decision has not been defined precisely. Here, we use a fate-mapping approach to examine the relationship between GC B cells selected to undergo additional rounds of affinity maturation, GC pre-PC, and PC. The data show that initial PC selection overlaps with GC B cell selection, but that the PC compartment accumulates a less diverse and higher affinity collection of antibodies over time. Thus, whereas the GC continues to diversify over time, affinity-based pre-PC selection sieves the GC to enable the accumulation of a more restricted group of high-affinity antibody-secreting PC. © 2023 ElTanbouly et al.

Citation

Mohamed A ElTanbouly, Victor Ramos, Andrew J MacLean, Spencer T Chen, Maximilian Loewe, Sandra Steinbach, Tarek Ben Tanfous, Brianna Johnson, Melissa Cipolla, Anna Gazumyan, Thiago Y Oliveira, Michel C Nussenzweig. Role of affinity in plasma cell development in the germinal center light zone. The Journal of experimental medicine. 2024 Jan 01;221(1)

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PMID: 37938344

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