Whither the Anergic B-cell

Autoimmunity 1994, 19: 135-140

By David A Fulcher and Antony Basten

The authors used the double transgenic HEL model (see the papers by Goodnow for details of this system) to investigate the life-span of B cells undergoing anergy or elimination.

The kinetics of B cell loss was first investigated in double-transgenic animals expressing membrane bound HEL (mHEL) and antibodies to HEL. The anti-HEL B cells failed to progress beyond a very early stage of pre-B cell development. Their survival half-life was about 15 hours. Thus, self-reactive B cells, while constantly produce, were rapidly deleted from the population.

In the double-transgenic model expressing HEL in a soluble form, B cells from the peripheral lymphoid tissue had a 3.4 day half-life, compared to 4.6 weeks for B cells not expressing anti-HEL. Additional studies indicated that these B cells died in the T cell zones of the peripheral lymphoid tissue, suggesting that following activation with HEL, B cells move to T cells zones in search of cognate T cells to provide the second signal for activation.