#58 B cell maturation and class switching with Hamish King

the bioinformatics chat

In this episode, we learn about B cell maturation and class switching from Hamish King. Hamish recently published a paper on this subject in Science Immunology, where he and his coauthors analyzed gene expression and antibody repertoire data from human tonsils. In the episode Hamish talks about some of the interesting B cell states he uncovered and shares his thoughts on questions such as «When does a B cell decide to class-switch?» and «Why is the antibody isotype correlated with its affinity?»

Links:

• Single-cell analysis of human B cell maturation predicts how antibody class switching shapes selection dynamics (Hamish W. King, Nara Orban, John C. Riches, Andrew J. Clear, Gary Warnes, Sarah A. Teichmann, Louisa K. James) (paywalled by Science Immunology)
• Antibody repertoire and gene expression dynamics of diverse human B cell states during affinity maturation (the preprint of the above Science Immunology paper)
• www.tonsilimmune.org: An immune cell atlas of the human tonsil and B cell maturation

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