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Germinal Center B Cell Expression Of Aire Regulates Antibody Diversification And Autoimmunity, Jordan Zheng Zhou
Germinal Center B Cell Expression Of Aire Regulates Antibody Diversification And Autoimmunity, Jordan Zheng Zhou
Wayne State University Dissertations
B cells are a unique subset of immune cells that, in response to antigen, diversify their antibody repertoire to generate progressively higher affinity antibodies of different isotypes through the processes of affinity maturation/somatic hypermutation (SHM) and class switch recombination (CSR). One of the major sites in which this diversification occurs is in T cell dependent microanatomical structures known as germinal centers (GC). Here, we find that GC B cells express the protein, autoimmune regulator (Aire) in a CD40 dependent manner. In these cells, Aire interacts with activation induced cytidine deaminase (AID), the protein responsible for initiating the processes of diversification …