'Master' Switch Governs Antibody Production
By Michael Smith, North American Correspondent, MedPage Today Published: July 16, 2009 Reviewed by Zalman S. Agus, MD; Emeritus Professor University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Dorothy Caputo, MA, RN, BC-ADM, CDE, Nurse Planner |
During a series of animal experiments, scientists found that the protein Bcl6 is the "on" switch that governs the production of so-called T follicular helper cells, according to Shane Crotty, PhD, of the La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology in La Jolla, Calif., and colleagues.
T follicular helper cells -- known as TFH cells for short -- are a subset of CD-positive T cells that help B cells differentiate and produce antibodies, the team reported online in Science.
In the absence of the Bcl6 protein, TFH cells do not arise and a key step in the production of antibodies -- differentiation of germinal centers in the lymph nodes -- does not happen, the researchers showed. /.../
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