Hai Qi: The fate of MBCs
Hai Qi, Professor at Tsinghua University, shared on X:
“Excited to share our new story freshly out in Nature Immunology, answering the key question, how do memory B cells (MBC), upon antigen recall, decide to participate in secondary germinal centers (GC) or become plasma cells (PC)? Quite relevant to HIV bnAb vaccination.
Our results suggest this choice is based on an epigenetic recording of the entire stimulation history that a clonal B cell lineage has cumulatively experienced. This recording is written in an IRF4-dependent manner and dictates the balance between antagonistic BACH2 and BLIMP1.
That balance is modulated progressively in favor of BLIMP1, eventually leading to its massive upregulation to convert a B cell into a PC.
Our model of progressive IRF4 imprinting readily explains previously observed recall fate preferences of MBCs expressing different Ig classes or different PDL2/CD80 phenotypes.
Our model provides a unified explanation for why plasma cell output from GCs gradually increases from early to late stages and why as compared with naive B cells MBCs generally do not make a major contribution to GCs induced by secondary immunization.”
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Source: Hai Qi/X