Epigenetic changes drive the fate of a B cell

Scientists at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard discover epigenetic changes unique to B cells and B cell subtypes

2021-05-13

(Press-News.org) BOSTON - B cells are the immune cells responsible for creating antibodies, and most B cells, known as B2 cells, produce antibodies in response to a pathogen or a vaccine, providing defense and immunity against infections. But a small subset of long-lived B cells, known as B1 cells, are quite different from their short-lived cousins, the B2 cells. Instead of producing antibodies in response to invaders, they spontaneously make antibodies that perform vital housekeeping functions, such as removing waste like oxidized LDL cholesterol from the blood.

Like all the cells in the body, B1 and B2 cells have the same DNA, and therefore the same starting set of instructions. It is through epigenetic modifications, which open and close different areas of the genome to the machinery that reads the genetic instructions, that the same genome can be used to create unique instructions for each cell type. Understanding how the different epigenetic landscapes - the changes in instructions - allows for these differences in such similar cells is both an important fundamental question in immunology and can help scientists better understand diseases linked to B cells' dysregulation.

Shiv Pillai, MD, PhD, a core member of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard, studied the DNA modifications present in both cell types during different stages of development to identify an epigenetic signature that may determine whether a cell becomes a B1 or a B2 cell. This work was published recently in the journal END

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Epigenetic changes drive the fate of a B cell

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