The London Research Institute hosts a number of conferences throughout the year and has extensive seminar schedules as part of its education programme.
Highlighted Paper: Asymmetric segregation of polarized antigen on B cell division shapes presentation capacity
Submitted by hawkes07 on Fri, 17/02/2012 - 09:49
The Lymphocyte Interaction Laboratory published the following article in Science recently.
Thaunat O, Granja AG, Barral P, Filby A, Montaner B, Collinson L, Martinez-Martin N, Harwood NE, Bruckbauer A, Batista FD. (2012) Asymmetric segregation of polarized antigen on B cell division shapes presentation capacity. Science 335:475-9 (Abstract) (Facundo Batista)
B cell activation results in the generation of antibodies and the establishment of immunological memory that together provide protection against viruses, bacteria and also cancers. The process of B cell activation is triggered by the ligation of B cell receptor (BCR) with specific antigen. Subsequently antigen is internalized, processed and presented to helper T cells that provide the second signal necessary for B cell proliferation and differentiation. In this paper, we observed that B cells maintain internalized antigen in a polarized distribution for extended periods in vivo. Interestingly this polarization is preserved up to and during B cell division, giving rise to daughter B cells containing different amounts of antigen. Finally, we showed that the differential antigen inheritance influences the extent to which progeny can present antigen to T cells. We postulate that the existence of these two populations may be important in terms of facilitating affinity selection for the generation of high affinity antibodies and determining the outcome of B cell differentiation.
