Journal
JOURNAL OF IMMUNOLOGY
Volume 185, Issue 2, Pages 1015-1027Publisher
AMER ASSOC IMMUNOLOGISTS
DOI: 10.4049/jimmunol.1000698
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Funding
- National Institutes of Health [AR39555, AR53228, AI059714, AR42242, AI51977, T32 HL07195, T32AI07244]
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During a T cell-dependent Ab response, B cells undergo Ab class switching and V region hypermutation, with the latter process potentially rendering previously innocuous B cells autoreactive. Class switching and hypermutation are temporally and anatomically linked with both processes dependent on the enzyme, activation-induced deaminase, and occurring principally, but not exclusively, in germinal centers. To understand tolerance regulation at this stage, we generated a new transgenic mouse model expressing a membrane-tethered gamma 2a-reactive superantigen (gamma 2a-macroself Ag) and assessed the fate of emerging IgG2a-expressing B cells that have, following class switch, acquired self-reactivity of the Ag receptor to the macroself-Ag. In normal mice, self-reactive IgG2a-switched B cells were deleted, leading to the selective absence of IgG2a memory responses. These findings identify a novel negative selection mechanism for deleting mature B cells that acquire reactivity to self-Ag. This process was only partly dependent on the Bcl-2 pathway, but markedly inefficient in MRL-Fas(lpr) lupus mice, suggesting that defective apoptosis of isotype-switched autoreactive B cells is central to Fas mutation-associated systemic autoimmunity. The Journal of Immunology, 2010, 185: 1015-1027.
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