(03) Antibody Diveristy and B Cell Developement Flashcards
What does antibody repertiore refer to?
Complete collection of B cell receptor specificities that exists in the secondary lymphoid tissues of the host
What process is responsible for generating the 10^11 unique specificities of B cells?
- Genes that mediate this process
Somatic Recombination
- RAG-1 and RAG-2 (Recombination Activation Genes) mediate somatic Recombination
What are the light chain coding regions composed of?
- what are the 2 sets of light gene segments, that contain each of these 3 parts?
- Single Variable Gene Segment
- Single Joining Gene Segment
- Single Constant Gene Segments
**Kappa and Lambda
What are the heavy chain coding regions composed of?
- are there 2 sets of gene segments coding?
- Single Variable Region (V)
- Single Diversity Region (D)
- Single Joining (J) segment
- Single Constant (C) region
Where are the light and heavy chain genes located in the genome?
Lambda Light Genes = Chromosome 22
Kappa Light Genes = Chromosome 2
Heavy Chain genes = Chromosome 14
- *What do RAG-1 and RAG-2 do?
- what happens if you don’t have these enzymes?
Catalyze double stranded breaks and recombination events that make V-D and V-D-J recombinations
Lack of Enzymes = SCID (severe combined immunodeficiency)
- *What does TdT do?
- what processes is involved in?
- why is this important?
Catalyzes the addition of “N” nucleotides in the junctions between rearranging gene segments during somatic recombination
Processes:
- HEAVY CHAIN somatic recombination
- ß-chain rearrangements in T-cells
Importance:
- changes in the coding region cause even more variability in the number of specificities
T or F: any light chain produced can be paired with any heavy chain produced
True
T or F: somatic recombination is antigen dependent
False, this process occurs regardless of the presence of antigens
What are the two antigen dependent mechanisms of B cell development?
- Affinity Maturation (binding diversity)
- aka somatic hypermutation - Class Switching (functional Diversity)
What is somatic hypermutation?
- steps that lead to it?
- Where does it occur?
- B Cell Receives activation stimuli and begins to proliferate
- High rates of mutation occur IN RECOMBINED regions during proliferation
- Some mutated antibodies have higher affinity and some lower
Location:
- Germinal Center of B cell follicles of 2˚ lymphoid tissues
T or F: a POSITIVE selection method is used in affinity maturation/somatic hypermutation?
True, higher affinity cells are positively selected
What is the general outcome of somatic hypermutation?
The immune response improves over the course of the infection
T or F: all B cell initially produce IgE antibodies.
False, they produce IgM antibodies
What does class (isotype) switching do?
- Why is this efficient?
Changes the constant region of the antibody WITHOUT changes the variable region
THIS CHANGES FUNCTIONALITY NOT SPECIFICITY
- ONLY 1 B cell needs to be activated and it can do class switching to make IgG, IgE, IgA antibodies etc.