B Lymphocyte Ag Recognition Flashcards
What type of antigens can BCR recognize?
Proteins, polysaccharides, lipids, and nucleic acids
Do BCR’s have more or less diversity than TCRs?
Less
Which region of the BCR confers isotope and effector function?
Constant region- can also switch immunoglobulin from membrane bound to soluble
What happens to the specificity of B cells upon antigen binding?
Highly increased (but baseline BCR specificity is still higher than TCR)
What is the on and off rates of BCRs?
Rapid on-rate and variable off-rate
What is the complementarity determining region of BCRs?
Hypervariable area recognizing and contacting antigens
What is the structure and general function of IgA?
Dimer. Mucosal immunity
What is the structure and general function of IgE?
Monomer. Mast cell activator
What is the structure and general function of IgG?
Monomer. Fc dependent phagocytosis, placental transfer, opsonizer, complement system.
What is the structure and general function of IgM
Pentamer. Naive B cell antigen receptor and complement activation. Primary response**
What happens to IgG expressing B cells after activation?
Isotype switching and IgG release
What happens to high-affinity Ig expressing B cells following activation and differentiation?
affinity maturation= B cell makes Ab for repeated exposure (memory b cells)
When do B cell precursors rearrange their immunoglobulin genes?
After contact with bone marrow stromal cells
What is baseline variability in B and T cells?
Multiple V region genes (RAG1/RAG2)
What is combinatorial variability in B and T cells?
VDJ joining (limited by number of VDJ combinations)
What is junctional variability?
Inaccurate gene segment splicing for unlimited diversity.
What are the three types of junctional variability?
- exonuclease removal of nucleotides from V,D,J regions.
- terminal deoxyribonucleotidyl transferase (tdt) adds in nucleotides between V&D and D&J regions to form N regions.
- DNA addition before DNA break repair to form P regions.
What is second combinatorial variability in B and T cells?
H&L chain random assortment