SummaryThe secretion of specific antibodies and the development of somatically mutated memory B cells in germinal centers are consequences of T cell-dependent challenge with the hapten (4-hydroxy-3-nitrophenyl)acetyl (NP). Using six-parameter flow cytometry and single cell molecular analysis we can directly monitor the extent of somatic hypermutation in individual responsive (isotype switched) antigen-specific B cells. The current study provides a direct quantitative assessment of recruitment into the antibody-secreting compartment on the one hand, and the germinal center pathway to memory on the other. Cellular expansion in both compartments is exponential and independent during the first week after challenge. The first evidence of somatic mutation, towards the end of the first week, was restricted to the germinal center pathway. Furthermore, germinal center cells express a significantly shorter third hypervariable region (CDR3), even when unmutated, than their antibody-secreting counterparts, suggesting a secondary selection event may occur at the bifurcation of these two pathways in vivo. By the end of the second week, the majority of mutated clones express a shorter CDR3 and affinity-increasing mutations as evidence of further selection after somatic mutation. These data provide evidence for substantial proliferation within germinal centers before the initiation of somatic mutation and the subsequent selection of a significant frequency of mutated clonotypes into the memory compartment.

The ability of purified B1a (Ly-1 B) and B2 cells to switch immunoglobulin isotype was assessed by limiting dilution analysis in two in vitro culture systems. When stimulated in the presence of interleukins-4 and -5 by either lipopolysaccharide or CD40 ligand, the frequency of IgG1 precursors in the B1a population was at most one third that of IgM precursors. In B2 cells, however, the frequency of IgG1 precursors was up to seven times that of IgM precursors. B1a cells were shown to respond to interleukin-4 by virtue of up-regulating major histocompatibility complex class II expression when exposed to the cytokine, precluding non-responsiveness as a reason for not switching to IgG1. Indeed, interleukin-4 was found to specifically induce transcription of the germ-line IgG1 constant region locus in B1a cells as it did in B2 cells. Collectively these results suggest that the ability of B1 cells to respond to isotype switch commitment factors such as interleukin-4 may be secondary to the production of IgM by these cells.

No abstract