Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Batista, Facundo D
• Neuberger, Michael S

Titel

Affinity Dependence of the B Cell Response to Antigen: A Threshold, a Ceiling, and the Importance of Off-Rate

Ist Teil von

• Immunity (Cambridge, Mass.), 1998-06, Vol.8 (6), p.751-759

Ort / Verlag

United States: Elsevier Inc

Erscheinungsjahr

1998

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Initiation and affinity maturation of the humoral immune response is driven by antigen interaction with BCR. To study how signaling and antigen presentation through BCR depend on antigen/BCR affinity, lysozyme-specific B cell transfectants were challenged with mutated lysozymes differing in their binding kinetics. For detectable triggering, the antigen/BCR complex needed a K a > 10 6 M −1 (dissociation half-life > ∼1 s). Mutated lysozymes whose binding was below this threshold could nevertheless be presented if complexed with soluble antibody. Above the threshold, the concentration of antigen required to trigger a response decreased as the affinity (particularly dissociation half-life) increased. However, a plateau was reached at K a s > ∼10 10 M −1 (dissociation half-life > 0.5 hr), supporting the idea of a ceiling to affinity maturation.