Memory persistence and differentiation into antibody-secreting cells accompanied by positive selection in longitudinal BCR repertoires
- Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, Russian Federation
- Shemyakin-Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Russian Federation
Abstract
The stability and plasticity of B cell-mediated immune memory ensures the ability to respond to the repeated challenges. We have analyzed the longitudinal dynamics of immunoglobulin heavy chain repertoires from memory B cells, plasmablasts, and plasma cells from the peripheral blood of generally healthy volunteers. We reveal a high degree of clonal persistence in individual memory B cell subsets, with inter-individual convergence in memory and antibody-secreting cells (ASCs). ASC clonotypes demonstrate clonal relatedness to memory B cells, and are transient in peripheral blood. We identify two clusters of expanded clonal lineages with differing prevalence of memory B cells, isotypes, and persistence. Phylogenetic analysis revealed signs of reactivation of persisting memory B cell-enriched clonal lineages, accompanied by new rounds of affinity maturation during proliferation and differentiation into ASCs. Negative selection contributes to both persisting and reactivated lineages, preserving the functionality and specificity of BCRs to protect against current and future pathogens.
Data availability
Sequencing data have been deposited in the ArrayExpress database (www.ebi.ac.uk/arrayexpress, acc. num. E-MTAB-11193). The code for repertoire analysis is available at https://github.com/amikelov/igh_subsets; the code for clonal lineage analysis is available at https://github.com/EvgeniiaAlekseeva/Clonal_group_analysis
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Naive B-cell receptor heavy chain repertoire of celiac patients and healthy controlsEuropean Nucleotide Archive, PRJEB26509.
Article and author information
Author details
Dmitriy M Chudakov
Funding
Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation (075-15-2020-807)
- Dmitriy M Chudakov
Russian Foundation for Basic Research (20-34-90153)
- Evgeniia I Alekseeva
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Tomohiro Kurosaki, Osaka University, Japan
Ethics
Human subjects: Informed consent was obtained from each donor. The study was approved by the Local Ethical Committee of Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University, Moscow, Russia (abstract #190 18 Nov 2019).
Version history
- Preprint posted: January 1, 2022 (view preprint)
- Received: April 8, 2022
- Accepted: September 11, 2022
- Accepted Manuscript published: September 15, 2022 (version 1)
- Accepted Manuscript updated: September 22, 2022 (version 2)
- Version of Record published: September 30, 2022 (version 3)
Copyright
© 2022, Mikelov et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Memory persistence and differentiation into antibody-secreting cells accompanied by positive selection in longitudinal BCR repertoires
eLife 11:e79254.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.79254
Further reading
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CD4+ T cell activation is driven by five-module receptor complexes. The T cell receptor (TCR) is the receptor module that binds composite surfaces of peptide antigens embedded within MHCII molecules (pMHCII). It associates with three signaling modules (CD3γε, CD3δε, and CD3ζζ) to form TCR-CD3 complexes. CD4 is the coreceptor module. It reciprocally associates with TCR-CD3-pMHCII assemblies on the outside of a CD4+ T cells and with the Src kinase, LCK, on the inside. Previously, we reported that the CD4 transmembrane GGXXG and cytoplasmic juxtamembrane (C/F)CV+C motifs found in eutherian (placental mammal) CD4 have constituent residues that evolved under purifying selection (Lee et al., 2022). Expressing mutants of these motifs together in T cell hybridomas increased CD4-LCK association but reduced CD3ζ, ZAP70, and PLCγ1 phosphorylation levels, as well as IL-2 production, in response to agonist pMHCII. Because these mutants preferentially localized CD4-LCK pairs to non-raft membrane fractions, one explanation for our results was that they impaired proximal signaling by sequestering LCK away from TCR-CD3. An alternative hypothesis is that the mutations directly impacted signaling because the motifs normally play an LCK-independent role in signaling. The goal of this study was to discriminate between these possibilities. Using T cell hybridomas, our results indicate that: intracellular CD4-LCK interactions are not necessary for pMHCII-specific signal initiation; the GGXXG and (C/F)CV+C motifs are key determinants of CD4-mediated pMHCII-specific signal amplification; the GGXXG and (C/F)CV+C motifs exert their functions independently of direct CD4-LCK association. These data provide a mechanistic explanation for why residues within these motifs are under purifying selection in jawed vertebrates. The results are also important to consider for biomimetic engineering of synthetic receptors.
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