Regulation of germinal center responses, memory B cells and plasma cell formation—an update

LM Corcoran, DM Tarlinton - Current opinion in immunology, 2016 - Elsevier
Current opinion in immunology, 2016Elsevier
Highlights•Competition for Tfh drives GC B cell proliferation, mutation and affinity
maturation.•Relationship between IgA memory, the microbiota and maternally transmitted
immunoglobulin.•New and old transcriptional regulators of GC and plasma cell
biology.•Epigenetic modifiers fine tune antibody responses, and AID de-methylates
DNA.Progress in understanding humoral immunity has been accelerated by the powerful
experimental approaches of genetics, genomics and imaging. Excellent reviews of these …
Highlights
  • Competition for Tfh drives GC B cell proliferation, mutation and affinity maturation.
  • Relationship between IgA memory, the microbiota and maternally transmitted immunoglobulin.
  • New and old transcriptional regulators of GC and plasma cell biology.
  • Epigenetic modifiers fine tune antibody responses, and AID de-methylates DNA.
Progress in understanding humoral immunity has been accelerated by the powerful experimental approaches of genetics, genomics and imaging. Excellent reviews of these advances appeared in 2015 in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the discovery of B cell and T cell lineages in the chicken. Here we provide a contemporary model of B cell differentiation, highlighting recent publications illuminating germinal center (GC), memory B cell and antibody-secreting plasma cell biology. The important contributions of CD4T cells to antibody responses have been thoroughly reviewed elsewhere.
Elsevier