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The Humoral Immune Response Is Mediated By Antibodies Proteins

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1.4 The humoral immune response This arm of adaptive immune response is mediated by antibodies secreted by B cells. B cells originate from hematopoietic stem cells in the liver during fetal development and from bone marrow after birth. In order to be able to recognize a huge number of different antigen, antibodies must be so rich in diversity. Instead of having separate gene for each different immunoglobulin, diversity of the antibody repertoire is generated from a limited number of inherited sequences that undergo alteration including recombination and mutation. During the pro B-cell stage, B cells undergo rearrangement of V, D, and J gene segments encoded at the heavy chain gene locus. This process then followed by recombination of V-J segments at the light chain locus. These recombination processes called VDJ recombination. To create more diverse receptor, nucleotides at the junctions of the V and D, D and J, or V and J segments are removed or added at the time these segments are joined. This is called junctional diversity. All these processes result in highly variable region. At the pre-B cell stage, central tolerance mechanism occurs. B cells that bind strongly to self-antigen are removed through apoptosis or B-cell receptor rearrangement. Other cells that bind weakly to self-antigen are became anergy or may go to peritoneal cavity (55, 56). This immature transitional B cells migrate to periphery to complete the maturation process, particularly in the spleen (57, 58).

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