title: Role of germinal centers for the induction of broadly-reactive memory B cells.
abstract: Virus-specific memory B cells (Bmem) play a crucial role in protecting against variant viruses. The ability to recognize these variant viruses, defined as antibody breadth, is achieved in Bmempopulations by two very different pathways, germline-encoded cross-reactivity and affinity-driven, somatic evolution in germinal centers (GCs) for conserved viral epitopes. The latter class of broadly-reactive Bmemcells are not cross-reactive per se, but bind epitopes crucial for viral fitness. Although these conserved epitopes are often weakly immunogenic, the GC reaction is surprisingly permissive for the continued survival/proliferation of B cells that bind with low affinity or react to cryptic epitopes, increasing their chance of memory recruitment. In this review, we discuss the adaptive strategies of B-cell memory to viral antigenic variations.
authors.affiliation: Department of Immunology, National Institute of Infectious Diseases, Tokyo 162-8640, Japan. Electronic address: ytakahas@niid.go.jp.
authors.forename: Yoshimasa
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Takahashi
authors.affiliation: Department of Immunology and Human Vaccine Institute, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC 27710, USA. Electronic address: garnett.kelsoe@duke.edu.
authors.forename: Garnett
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Kelsoe
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000956:Antigens, Viral / Q000276:immunology*; D001402:B-Lymphocytes / Q000276:immunology*; D049109:Cell Proliferation; D002470:Cell Survival / Q000276:immunology; D000939:Epitopes / Q000276:immunology*; D018858:Germinal Center / Q000276:immunology* / Q000821:virology; D006801:Humans; D007156:Immunologic Memory; D014780:Viruses / Q000276:immunology*
chemical_list: D000956:Antigens, Viral; D000939:Epitopes