Submitted July 23, 2007
Accepted December 11, 2007
SWAP-70 deficiency causes high affinity plasma cell generation despite impaired Germinal Center formation
Laurence Quemeneur, Veronique Angeli, Michael Chopin, and Rolf Jessberger*
Department of Gene and Cell Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY, United States
Institute of Physiological Chemistry, Dresden University of Technology, Dresden, Germany
* Corresponding author; email: rolf.jessberger{at}tu-dresden.de.
Germinal Centers are lymphoid tissue structures central to the generation of long-lived high affinity antibody forming B cells. However induction, maintenance and regulation of GCs are not sufficiently understood. The F-actin binding, Rac interacting protein SWAP-70 is strongly expressed in activated B cells like those in B follicles. Recent work suggests that SWAP-70 is involved in B cell activation, migration, and homing. Therefore, we investigated the role of SWAP-70 in the T-dependent immune response, in GC formation, and in differentiation into plasma and memory B cells. Compared to wt, SRBC- or NP-KLH immunized SWAP-70-/- mice have strongly reduced numbers of GCs and GC-specific B cells. However, SWAP-70-/- NP-specific B cells accumulate outside of the B follicles and SWAP-70-/- mice show more plasma cells in the red pulp and in the bone marrow, and increased NP-specific Ig and antibody forming B cells. Yet, the memory response is impaired. Thus, SWAP-70 deficiency uncouples GC formation from T-dependent antibody and long-lived plasma cell production, causes extrafollicular generation of high-affinity plasma cells, but does not adequately support the memory response.
