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J. Exp. Med.,
Volume 188, Number 4, August 17, 1998 765-772
By
From the * Laboratory of Molecular Immunology and the The germinal center (GC) is an anatomic compartment found in peripheral lymphoid organs,
wherein B cells undergo clonal expansion, somatic mutation, switch recombination, and reactivate immunoglobulin gene V(D)J recombination. As a result of somatic mutation, some GC
B cells develop higher affinity antibodies, whereas others suffer mutations that decrease affinity,
and still others may become self-reactive. It has been proposed that secondary V(D)J rearrangements in GCs might rescue B cells whose receptors are damaged by somatic mutations. Here
we present evidence that mature human tonsil B cells coexpress conventional light chains and
recombination associated genes, and that they extinguish recombination activating gene and
terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase expression when their receptors are cross-linked. Thus,
the response of the recombinase to receptor engagement in peripheral B cells is the opposite of the response in developing B cells to the same stimulus. These observations suggest that receptor revision is a mechanism for receptor diversification that is turned off when antigen receptors are cross-linked by the cognate antigen.
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, The
Rockefeller University, New York 10021-6399; § Schering-Plough Laboratory for Immunobiology,
Dardilly 69571, France; the Baylor Institute for Immunology Research, Sammons Cancer Center,
Dallas, Texas 75246; the ¶ Department of Immunology, The Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical
Science, Tokyo 113, Japan; the ** Centre d'Immunologie de Marseille-Luminy, 13288 Marseille cedex
09, France; and the DNAX Research Institute, Palo Alto, California 94304-1104
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