Transcriptional profiles of normal human mature B cells

Mature B cells leave the bone marrow as naïve B cells and migrate to the secondary lymphoid organs where they encounter the antigen for the first time. This interaction stimulates B cells to rapidly grow and form characteristic histological structures called germinal center. In the germinal centers, B cells are targeted by mechanisms of genetic editing of the immunoglobulin loci, namely somatic hypermutation and class switch recombination, undergo selection for high affinity immunoglobulin receptors and are committed to differentiate into memory B cells or plasma cells. GCs display two histological areas the dark and the light zone that have been characterized as functionally distinct compartments through which B cells recycle multiple times during the germinal center reaction. Overall design: Naïve, germinal center and memory B cells were isolated from three independent donors each.

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Brescia P, Schneider C, Holmes AB, Shen Q, Hussein S, Pasqualucci L, Basso K, Dalla-Favera R